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Now Angelo Mozilo can safely title his autobiography "Dodd is My Co-Pirate"! (Old Paul Krassner joke) 10:03 A.M.
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Yesterday, I was thinking of lacing into Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano for failing to take the heat for her boss on Flight 253. But I decided that would be wrong! I don't think Obama's been hurt by his cabinet secretary's idiotic statement that the "system worked." Do you? I think he's been helped. Once again, the Obama administration has pioneered a new form of damage control in the aftermath of government-caused disasters:
The Old Flak-Catcher Method: Loyal cabinet secretaries should take the blame--and the PR hit--for their agency's mistakes. The President stays as far away from the bad thing as possible, even when the White House is in reality intimately involved. (Think Janet Reno's response to the Waco debacle.)
The New Cathartic Punching Bag Method: The loyal cabinet secretary is evasive and disingenuous, reflexively and ludicrously defending the bureaucracy he or she commands. This allows the secretary's principal, the President, to win huge points with the voters for publicly contradicting and implicitly dressing down the idiot cabinet secretary. The President gets to look like a) he's in charge and b) he's our last hope for sanity.
The new strategy works especially well on issues, like terrorism, that the President can't really distance himself from anyway. ... P.S.: It's important, for the Punching Bag strategy to work, that the cabinet secretary not accidentally begin to make sense. Rather, he or she needs to put forward the worst examples of bureaucratic mindlessness in order to give voters the greatest satisfaction upon seeing them demolished by the no-nonsense Commander in Chief. ... My old boss Charles Peters used to say that the first rule of married life was "Never apologize too quickly"--by which (I think) he meant that when you are in the wrong you need to advance all your wrong, pathetic excuses and arguments in order to give your partner the satisfaction of knocking them down and making you admit you were wrong. The same sort of dynamic is at work here. Napolitano played her role perfectly. Maybe David Broder is right! ... Update: IBD sees it all as Putinesque. ...
P.P.S.: Mystery Solved? Why did so many D.C. figures rush to save Napolitano? Alert reader C.F. suggests that a forgotten bit of Napolitano's bio supplies the "grail for her MSM enablers." As XX Factor noted in 2008:
[W]hat many don't know about Napolitano—or don't remember—is that she first came onto the national stage in 1991 as an attorney representing Anita Hill during the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on Clarence Thomas. (Joe Biden chaired the committee at that time and is remembered for his ham-handedness in dealing with the sensitive topic of sexual harassment.) Napolitano was in charge of preparing the testimonies of Hill's supporting witnesses, and she credits her involvement in the case with deepening her commitment to electoral politics. [E.A.]
Aha. Her appointment as U.S. Attorney and march up the Arizona political chain only came after that D.C. debut. ... I suspect this goes some ways toward explaining the rallying-around effect. 1) The Hill/Thomas hearing was the story of a lifetime. Bonds forged in the white hot heat of the national spotlight, etc., can be expected to endure--especially for those concerned with proscribing sexual harrassment or preserving Roe; 2) You probably wouldn't get the job of representing Anita Hill unless you were already pretty well-connected to Washington's liberal-legal public-interest-activist network. In any case, you sure would be afterwards. ...12:10 A.M..
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She gave an awful public performance in the wake of the Flt. 253 terror incident--assuring air travelers that "the system worked" when the one obvious thing was that for whatever reason the system didn't work, as President Obama acknowledged a few days later. She then seems to have panicked and pressed the "Friends, Save Me" button. David Broder produced an unreal Napolitano-for-President column. Maureen Dowd conducted a rare, non-ironic positive interview, defending Napolitano on the grounds that "Robert Gibbs said the same." Neither gave any particular reason why we should care whether Napolitano stays or goes. Sunday-morning Senators from both parties rallied around. ... From out here in California, this rallying-around by virtually the entire city of Washington, D.C., looks bizarre. What is there that's so golden about a seemingly bland centrist governor from Arizona? Is she provocative and surprisingly candid, like former Arizona governor Bruce Babbit? No, she's mind-numbingly cautious. She has a "good skill set," volunteers ex-Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. To what great end has it been employed? What difficult (or easy) reform has she accomplished? Aren't there a lot of people in the country with good skill sets? It's not like this was her first public screw-up....
Maybe a reader can help solve the mystery for those of us who are out of the loop. Does she give great parties? Is it that DHS has a highly effective, overactive P.R. person? Or does America's bureaucratic capital simply overvalue those whose first instinct is to defend their bureaucracy? ... 12:45 P.M.
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Lots of talk on the Sunday chat shows about how the uncertainty over health care reform is discouraging businesses from hiring, since they don't know what sort of taxes, etc. they'll be facing. But if what business wants is certainty ... well, at this point the fastest way to get certainty is for the Dems to pass a bill quickly, no? ... 11:18 A.M.
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Reihan Salam joins the anti-Orszagists, calling Obama's emphasis on curve-bending cost control in health care the "most glaring and consequential unforced error" of his presidency. 11:20 A.M.
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Only 33% of *U.S. born* (second-generation) Latino immigrant kids identify themselves first by the term "American." Most prefer either their country of origin (41%) or the term "Latino" or "Hispanic." This is supposed to prove Lou Dobbs wrong? 11:21 A.M.
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The Secret Weak Link in the Dems' 60-vote Scenario? If Joe Lieberman wants the Medicare buy-in taken out, and he's the 60th vote, then there's an obvious solution for Harry Reid: Take the Medicare buy-in out! Duh. ...The senator I worry about is Blagojevich appointee Roland Burris of Illinois. He's already made noises about voting against any bill that doesn't have a public option, which the final Senate bill is unlikely to have. ... Think about it. He's not running for reelection. What hold do the Dems have on him? His record does not give you confidence that he's not susceptible to whatever ...er, persuasion anti-reform lobbyists might come up with. He might like a bit of attention before he re-retires. And if he does vote against the bill it will at least appear to be from the left. It''s the perfect cover for doing the lobbyists' bidding, should he be so inclined. ....12/15 Update: Told you so! Burris threatens "no" vote again, after Reid/Lieberman deal. ... 11:28 A.M.
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Dana Milbank suggests that Max Baucus is scandal-proof--in the matter of recommending his girlfriend for a job--because he's a "dork"? I'm not sure Milbank has it right. He's applying New York standards. Baucus is Sexy for Washington. He's not even fat. ... 11:32 A.M.
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I knew they'd find a way to punish Ford: The new UAW contract with Ford apparently does not give America's surviving non-bankrupt automaker parity with GM and Chrysler, reports Bloomberg: "The plan doesn’t include cuts to retiree benefits, such as vision coverage, that were granted to GM and Chrysler." Rather, the pain seems even more concentrated on future hires (if there are any) than with the GM/Chrysler deals. ... TTAC wonders whether the UAW had an extra incentive to resist giving concessions that might make Ford more successful now that the union owns a large chunk of its main domestic competitors. ... P.S.: The argument that "the day the union owns the firm is the day workers will need another union" has always seemed a bogus argument against worker ownership. But in this case, where the union actually owns only competing firms, maybe it's not so bogus. Ford, GM and Chrysler workers used to have more or less equal status within the UAW. Now the union has a reason to give GM and Chrysler an edge wherever possible. ... 5:39 P.M.
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One Too Many Cherubim: Blog commenter "Cherubim," who may or may not be Elizabeth Edwards, has resurfaced . She's still a big Michael Jackson fan. ... P.S.: I would say this cuts against the Daily News report that Cherubim = Elizabeth. But others disagree. ... P.P.S.: And yes, there is a Multiple Cherubim Theory. ... 4:52 P.M.
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Unions Bend the Curve! 'Card check' may be stalled in Congress, but Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo report that public employee unions are still successfully bankrupting states and cities. Highlights:
-- Unionization has bent the cost curve of government health benefits--in the wrong direction:
Under the brilliant leadership of Dennis Rivera, 1199 built a top-notch political operation, and with the hospitals, which were barred from political activity, formed a partnership to maximize the flow of government revenue. The union-hospital alliance has been so successful in aligning itself with politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, that not only has 1199 been largely untouched by the downturn, but New York spends as much on Medicaid as California and Texas combined. [E.A.]
That last sentence is stunning. Coming soon to a "public option" near you? ...
-- ACORN, not a straw man! According to Siegel and DiSalvo, it's becoming a real power in New York City thanks to its affiliation with the Working Families Party (WFP):
[T]he WFP is thriving while New York's Democrats atrophy. In last week's New York City primaries, WFP candidates for city council won easily, as did the party's candidates for the city's second and third highest offices: comptroller and public advocate. Those are the best platforms from which to make a run for mayor of New York City when Bloomberg finally gives up his throne.
-- Even Barry Bluestone--the leftish economist who was one of the first to spot the rise in income inequality--worries about the vast gap in the benefits public employees win and the vastly less lucrative benefits ordinary private sector workers get. Thanks in large part to public employee unions, Siegel & DiSalvo note, the price of state and local services is growing rapidly--41% from 2000-2008, vs. 27 percent for private services. Ordinary workers have to pay for them.
The justification for public sector unionism is way weaker than that for private sector unionism. "[Government] workers are not extracting a share of the profits but rather a share of taxes," as former N.Y. Liberal Party leader Alex Rose puts it. And the right to strike, in the hands of key public unions, approaches a blackmail power. But the political strength of the unions is such that even most Republicans, at the state and local level, are scared to question them. They gelded Arnold Schwarzenegger. You want to be next? ... 4:39 P.M.
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Q.: Who would have been a more disastrous nominee for the Democrats: John Edwards or Bill Richardson? A: Edwards, but Richardson is giving him a run for his money. ... 5:12 P.M.
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kf is falling behind its self-imposed 15-items-per-week quota. ... Time to play catch-up!** ...
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Everyone hates the teachers' unions now. ... 5:42 P.M.
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I thought tomorrow was the ideal day to bury embarrassing news: "It was killed in Washington." 5:44 P.M.
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Fear of karmic retribution prevents me from quoting the unfortunately very funny part of this Pareene post. ... Update: Gore Vidal showed up yesterday at the Nixon library. So there. ... 5:45 P.M.
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Creepiest kicker of the week? Year? ....5:50 P.M.
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Jennifer Rubin spots K-Street Make-Work ... on her side of the cap-and-trade issue. ... P.S.: My old boss Charles Peters would say this scare-your-client/save your client theater is a form of "Washington Make-Believe"--and that, in Washington, "Make-Believe = Survival." ... I mean, imagine you're the poor lobbyist hired to fight "cap and trade" on behalf of industry. You've accidentally won, only 6 months into the administration. But you still have kids to put through college. What to do? ... 6:11 P.M.
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**-- If I start posting items from my twitter feeed you'll know things are really desperate. ...
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Arlen Specter tells union demonstrators they will be "satisfied" with his vote on card check. Peter Kirsanow thinks this is fairly ominious for card-check critics, as does John McCormack. I tend to agree. But is Specter really the only swing vote, or only the most rivetingly craven? ... 3:14 A.M.
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DDog Bites Man: Mark Blumenthal catches MyDD's Jerome Armstrong saying something foolish about the Virginia gubernatorial primary (the Mackerdammerung). ... Update: McAuliffe crushed. Cafe Milano sets prix fixe shiva. (Wine not included.) ... 3:10 A.M.
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SCOTUSblog on why we shouldn't get too excited about Justice Ginsburg's delay of the Chrysler deal. (One reason: "The wording of Ginsburg's order - 'stayed pending further order' - is the conventional way by which a Justice or the Court carries out an action that is expected to be short in duration, and not controlling - or even hinting at - the ultimate outcome.") ... Second Thoughts: FIAT's Sergio Marchionne removed a major obstacle to a Supreme Court intervention by declaring FIAT wouldn't walk away from the deal even if the June 15 deadline passes. (There had been informed speculation that the Court wouldn't want to get involved if it would then get blamed when FIAT bailed and the deal collapsed). ... Plus I talked with a veteran Court-watcher who made these points: 1) You know that Scalia and Thomas would like to intervene; 2) Roberts and Alito would probably want to intervene if they thought there's a chance of getting a fifth vote; 3) The issue isn't just bankruptcy law, it's the balance of executive and legislative power. The Obama administration, thanks to its expansive interpretation of TARP authority, now has tremendous power to make industrial policy without Congressional approval. On GM, for example, you'd think the crucial issue would be whether Congress will authorize subsidizing the "new" GM beyond the $50 billion already committed. But if the administration has authority to keep funneling TARP funds to automakers as well as banks (and if the banks start repaying billions that can then be redirected to Detroit) it may never have to go back to Congress to ask for more money, no? This would be the sort of issue the Court might want to confront even if it weren't, you know, embarrassingly results-oriented. ...
Update: Never mind. ....
P.S.: Doesn't Marchionne's pledge contradict the Obama administration's consistent position during the Chrysler bankruptcy, which was that everyone had to hurry up in part in order to prevent FIAT from walking away on June 15? ...
3:04 A.M.
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Do not follow me on twitter. ...The range of short posts that are good enough to twitter but not good enough to blog seems pretty narrow. Doubt I've hit it yet. ... 2:58 A.M.
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Left out of the Tom Braden obits: Braden was a California newspaper editor when (according to Braden) future Senator Alan Cranston personally showed him compromising photos of an opponent. "I thought it was pretty shoddy business. It certainly changed my opinion of [Cranston]," Braden said (as first reported by Carl Cannon). Cranston denied the charge. I believe Braden. ... 1:25 A.M.
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First Thought Not Best Thought: "Sniggered"? You make the call! One virtue of bloggingheads is that you are often relaxed enough to think out loud. The problem is that you are often relaxed enough to think out loud. I apologize to Althouse. But I do think I would have said the same dumb thing about a man. ... 1:10 A.M.
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kf Goes Green: The Obama aide disclosure that shocked me wasn't Lawrence Summers making $5 million at a hedge fund, but Tom Donilon "earning $3.9 million as a partner at the Washington law firm O’Melveny & Myers." ... Summers is a big-time economist, advising people with lots of money at stake on questions that involve, you know, equations. He had to "solve math puzzles" to get hired! I'd expect him to be expensive. But Donilon's just a political Washington lawyer. He makes almost $4M? Wow. I didn't know I'd fallen so far behind. Somebody really ought to do something about the growing income inequality in our society. 12:07 A.M.
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Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Any club that won't have me... : I was surprised to learn that there were special VIP areas at several otherwise extremely enjoyable pre-inaugural parties. Talk about a violation of social equality: how can a party claim to want all Americans treated equally if, you know, the party doesn't treat them equally? Why aren't these things stigmatized like skyboxes at ballparks? These events weren't even fundraisers, for the most part--it wasn't as if the VIPs had paid extra for exclusive first class seats. It was pure status rank--i.e., social inequality.
I see three possible policy initiatives that might restore American values to debauched celebrations:
1. Heap opprobrium on those who go to VIP areas in otherwise perfectly good parties. (It would be unfair to single anyone out. Like Jon Alter!) This might involve turning status striving on itself by suggesting VIP sections are where the losers go. Girls won't make passes at men who have passes, etc.
2. Create a second, tiny glass-walled V-VIP area within the regular VIP area--reserved for special VIPs who are above mingling with mere Alter-level VIPs. This would be a bit of performance art designed to emphasis the self-defeating, infinite-regress quality of mindless status differentiation.
3. Give an award--a sort of Social Egalitarian Oscar**--to celebrities who go to events but don't go to the designated "VIP" areas. ...
Pursuing option 3, kf honors ... Forest Whitaker and Natalie Portman!*** Also Jerry Yang, if he counts. ... I'm sure there are others. ... P.S.: I don't blame the organizers of these events. I assume it's some of the celebrities themselves who demand protection from annoyingly non-famous invitees. The system is to blame, I tell you. ... [If they'd let you in, would you have written this?--ed What makes you think they didn't let me in? You really think they didn't let me in?] ....
**--Suggestions for names gratefully accepted. The Velvet Scissor? ...
***-- These distinguished celebs were spotted mingling harmlessly with mere attendees. Of course, it's always possible they snuck off to the VIP areas to talk to Alter when I wasn't looking! ...
Update: There apparently actually was a glass-walled V-VIP area for J.Lo. and Marc Anthony at ... Cafe Milano. It kept them from Jake Tapper. ... 5:34 P.M.
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Whippersnappers "Juicebox Mafia": Good label! May it outlast the Israel-Hamas confilct. ... P.S.: For its use in context, see this fabulously pissy Marty Peretz post. ... 5:17 P.M.
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Now Obama's gone and pissed off Slashdot. ... 2:15 A.M.
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Liberal Media Bias: Occasional Slate contributor Tom Geoghegan is running for Rahm Emanuel's congressional seat. He's a friend of mine, a terrific writer and a man of honor. I'm for him even though I'm sure he's for card check. ... P.S.: You can't call Geoghegan unthinkingly left. In 1972, he wrote a justly famous analysis of the McGovern rebellion in the Democratic Party and its relationship with the student left--still one of the best pieces on the nervous breakdown of post-WWII liberalsim I've ever read. It's online. ... 1:28 A.M.
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After giving in to a lazy inconclusive lede on whether Richardson's withdrawal might or might not hurt Obama's Southwest strategy (Answer: It might or might not!) NYT's Adam Nagourney finally gets around to asking the obvious key question:
[W]hether the Obama administration’s eagerness to get Mr. Richardson into the Obama cabinet might have contributed to what appeared to be an uncharacteristic laxness ...
And, Nagourney might have added, if there was eagerness why the eagerness. Specifically, was there a pre-endorsement deal?. ... Nagourney doesn't seem to even make an attempt to find out the answer to his question. WaPo at least has some reporting on the vetting process-- and it doesn't reflect well on the expert Obama "team" that "scoured" Richardson's background. If there wasn't eagerness/laxness, it certainly looks like there was incompetence. After all, even if Richardson didn't fully disclose the scope of the investigation that scuppered his nomination, what kind of savvy Washingtonian would take Bill Richardson at his word? A scout for the Kansas City Athletics, maybe? ... P.S.: WaPo certainly didn't get to the bottom of the issue. We demand "tick-tock"--accounts of who said what to whom. And what they were eating. ... Backfill: Byron York notes that, if WaPo's report is right, the FBI seems to have started its background check one (1) day before the appointment was formally announced. ... 1:17 A.M.
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We'll all be working for Andrew Breitbart one day (if we aren't working for Arianna). In the meantime, he's launched Big Hollywood. ... I'm not sure he can succeed in his mission of getting conservative entertainment industry types to come out of the ideological closet--they're too worried about losing paying work. But that's kind of his point, no? ... 12:25 A.M.
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Enjoyable anti-DiFi sniping by William Bradley. ... He notes that CIA nominee Leon Panetta is more than just a Clinton loyalist (for one thing, he hasn't been all that loyal). ... But Bradley describes the Iraq Study Group, on which Panetta served, as
"widely excoriated on the right two years ago but whose blueprint is basically being followed today."
Really? I must have missed the part of the blueprint where the Iraq Study Group called for the Petraeus "surge" strategy. ... Update: Fred Kaplan joins the "Keep Kappes" choire, and has a suggestion for breaching the CIA's own internal wall to coordinate intelligence in specific problem areas. ... P.S.: We need a czar! ... Oh, wait. We already have a czar. ... 12:09 A.M.
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Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Michael Hirschorn has seen the future, and it is ... Arianna.
In this scenario, nytimes.com would begin to resemble a bigger, better, and less partisan version of the Huffington Post, which, until someone smarter or more deep-pocketed comes along, is the prototype for the future of journalism: a healthy dose of aggregation, a wide range of contributors, and a growing offering of original reporting. This combination has allowed the HuffPo to digest the news that matters most to its readers at minimal cost, while it focuses resources in the highest-impact areas. [E.A.]
Hmm. OK! .... But I don't quite understand Hirschorn's argument that the proliferation of "lifestyle fluff" in the Times has "undermined the perceived value of serious newspaper journalism." That seems a bit like the argument that gay marriage undermines the perceived value of traditional marriage. How? I don't know anyone who doesn't read the news because of the presence of the fluff. And I know quite a few people who read the news and also love the fluff. ... My problem with the fluff is that the need to generate so much copy, coupled with the subliminal need not to piss off advertisers, leads to what my old collegaue H.R. called "hearty hack" writing. But it's not as if most of the serious Times national reporters are great writers who are tragically infected by the hearty-hack virus. They would be hearty hacks without "Thursday Styles." ... Anyway, HuffPo has started its own lifestyle-y sections--e.g., "Living," and "Style"--for obvious commercial reasons not dissimilar from the Times' reasons. ... 11:30 P.M.
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Sunday, January 4, 2009
Too early to gloat on card check: From a respected weekly email written by a top D.C. Hill observer--
In the 111th Congress' first week, House Democrats plan to pass organized labor's first priority, the Card Check bill that would make organizing workplaces easier. Republicans and business passionately oppose the legislation. Timing of Senate action is uncertain, as Senators are consumed with confirmation of President-elect Obama's nominees to the cabinet. [E.A.]
It's tempting for "card check" opponents to gloat about it's deteriorating prospects in the Senate. I've indulged in some near-gloating myself. But it's ill-advised, to say the least. (I'm certainly not going to rely on WSJ's Kimberly Strassel after her disturbingly similar sneering on immigration). ...Among the alarming-but-plausible possibilities, there remains the threat of a deal in which Big Business effectively sells out Small Business by cutting some sort of compromise with Big Labor that would make organizing drives much easier. ...Remember that big companies are probably better positioned to absorb the costs of fighting unions, and they are more comfortable, perhaps, dealing with union bureaucracies. Plus it's likely that big corporations have already been the targets of unionizing campaigns if they are vulnerable. Smaller companies, on the other hand, might not have been worth organizing under the status quo but might become targets if the rules are changed to make organizing less time-consuming. ... The case for a big business/small business sellout doesn't seem as clear-cut as with government regulations (where bigger businesses are almost inherently better able to deal with paperwork). But it's worth watching out for. ... 9:35 P.M.
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Bill Richardson doesn't even 'vet for Commerce'! Always trust content from kausfiles [see, e.g., last item]. ... P.S.: A HuffPo rundown of questionable Richardson behavior here. ... 9:15 P.M.
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Rod's Army: Never mind the issues of race or electability. Will labor unions and other powerful Dem constituencies be pressuring Senate Majority Leader Reid to seat Roland Burris, the appointee of tainted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, simply because they think they desperately need one more vote in order to quickly pass controversial bills (i.e. card check!) over a GOP filibuster? Is that why Reid waffled on Meet the Press? Does the pressure to seat Burris actually depend on whether Al Franken gets the contested Minnesota seat--because, at least according to Nate Silver, if only Burris or only Franken is seated, the Dems don't get any closer to their goal (they gain a seat but the cloture-breaking bar rises from 59 to 60 votes)? Did Blagojevich know all this before he made his pick? It's not like he's tight with the SEIU, the major proponent of "card check" within the labor movement. ... Oh, wait. ...
Update: Alert reader S suggests I've misconceived the sitution--that Reid wants Burris seated (for the extra vote) but can't show it for fear of seeming to approve of Blagojevich. Reid would prefer to have the courts to force him to do it--that would be the ideal Kabuki. But this doesn't change the possible role "pressure" might play in forcing Reid to accept something less than the ideal Kabuki--a negotiated deal, for example, or quickly abandoning an appeal after an unfavorable initial ruling. ... 2:26 P.M.
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Holder's Defense: 'I was played for a sucker by a lobbyist!' From the NYT today, the lawyer for Attorney General nominee Eric Holder defends him in the Marc Rich Pardon scandal:
“There’s no question that [Marc Rich lobbyist Jack] Quinn played him and it was astute by Quinn because he did catch Eric unawares.”
Creative defense. Unfortunately, the NYT story makes it pretty clear that Holder knew too much about the case to have been unwillingly played. Seems more like the buddy system at work. ...[Thx to reader J.] 12:10 P.M.
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Undernews Alert: Rezko sentencing set for January 6. The Tribune story suggests this means he is not cooperating with prosecutors (if he was cooperating it would be delayed). ... [via NewsAlert] 11:47 A.M.
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On Warren Olney's To the Point, LAT veteran Doyle McManus says Robert Gates
is in the unusual position of being a cabinet member who can't really be fired because if the President and the Secretary of Defense were to end up at loggerheads on an issue, that could be politically very damaging for the president. [E.A.]
This seems astonishingly wrong. Obama can fire Gates more easily because Gates is a Bush holdover, no? Obama won an election by opposing Bush's policies. ... Maybe Sam Zell had a point about McManus. ... 2:14 A.M.
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Monday, December 1, 2008
'You should never have made those loans groups like us pressured you to make!' The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a "community-based organization," is suing Wall Street ratings services for approving bonds backed by home loans to African American and Latino home purchasers with "insufficient borrower income levels."
The firms "knew or should have known" that subprime loans disproportionately were marketed to minority consumers -- a process known as "reverse redlining" -- and that those borrowers would ultimately default and go into foreclosure at high rates, according to the coalition's complaint.
Hmmm. Didn't community-based organizations push for exactly this sort of reverse-redlining? I think they did. It's one thing to argue that they maybe weren't the major cause of the subprime meltdown. It's another for them to pose as victims wronged by the very system they worked hard to set up (including the securitization that enabled banks to keep up "reverse redlining"). ... 2:21 A.M.
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Here's a Saturday Belfast Telegraph story about Sebastian D'Souza, the photographer who took a now-famous photograph of one of the Mumbai terrorists in the process of gunning people down in a train station:
But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back." [E.A.]
Here's a Sunday New York Times front pager about the "troubling questions" the attacks raised about India's "ability to respond":
[T]he most troubling question to emerge for the Indian authorities was how, if official estimates are accurate, just 10 gunmen could have caused so much carnage and repelled Indian security forces for more than three days in three different buildings.
Part of the answer may lie in continuing signs that despite the country’s long vulnerability to terrorist attacks, Indian law enforcement remains ill-prepared. The siege exposed problems caused by inexperienced security forces and inadequate equipment, including a lack of high-power rifle scopes and other optics to help discriminate between the attackers and civilians. [E.A.]
Read the Times story and you'll see a numbing litany of "systemic" problems with Indian security, including "Ill-paid city police [who] are often armed with little more than batons," and "little information-sharing among law enforcement agencies" and all that inadequate equipment, including "old, bulky bulletproof jackets" and lack of thosehigh-power scopes and "no technology at their disposal to determine where the firepower was coming from ..." [E.A.] It reads like the budget-increase proposal submitted by the Mumbai police bureaucracy--The Indian Omnibus Anti-Terror Funding Act of 2009. Nowhere in the NYT story will you learn what American blog readers learned a day earlier when Instapundit (among others) linked to the Belfast story: Police had lots of guns, and no problem seeing who and where the terrorists were, but they wouldn't shoot at them.
I'm used to a sort of Liebling-like hierarchy of news sources, with twitterers and bloggers being fastest, but maybe less reliable, while the grand institutions of the MSM weigh in later with more comprehensive and accurate accounts. But that's not what is happening with this Mumbai story. The "fast" sources are telling you what happened. The "slow" MSM sources are using their extra time to sanitize what's happened, to build euphemistic assumptions into their very reporting of the events themselves--in this case, it just so happens, liberal assumptions:1) the idea that there is no problem that can't be solved by greater funding for government bureaucracies and more interagency taskforces** 2) the predisposition to think widely-distributed small arms and a willingness to use them can never be a good idea and 3) an antipathy to any suggestion that an aspect of foreign culture is inferior to nasty American culture. (Maybe we Americans are trigger happy. But do we think that a handful of terrorists could have gone on a similar rampage in New York City without quite quickly encountering a fair number of cops who would have shot back--let alone armed civilians who did the same)? ...
**--Substitute "lousy test scores" for "vulnerability to terrorist attacks" and you have the stereotypical liberal MSM template for reporting on inner-city education failure: insufficient spending leads to ill-paid teachers who lack the latest technology! ... 1:27 A.M.
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Saturday, November 29, 2008
A friend of mine who occasionally visits the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai tells me that earlier in November the hotel bristled with security, including aggressively manned checkpoints--security that had been absent a few months earlier. Apparently the security was withdrawn before terrorists attacked the hotel this week. ...I don't know what to make of this, but it at least suggests that the attacks might not have been "a complete surprise," as the headline on Slate's home page (but not the article to which it links) claims. ... Maybe they were anticipated but on an earlier date? ... Maybe the extra security caused the terrorists to postpone them. ... If so, were they originally planned for before the U.S. election? ...
Update: Hotel's owner says "we did have such a warning, and we did have some measures," which were relaxed before the attacks. But he argues they wouldn't have made a difference because ... the gunman didn't go in the front door.
However, [Tata Group chairman Ratan] Tata said the attackers did not enter through the entrance that has a metal detector. Instead, they came in a back entrance, he said.
"They knew what they were doing, and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements are in the front," he said.
Reminds me of the time I visited Hyannis Port when JFK was staying at the family compound there. The Secret Service was protecting it closely, except for a one-way street leaving the area, which was left unguarded--apparently on the theory that an assassin wouldn't go wrong way down a one-way street. ... More: kf's friend says that during the early-November high-security period the rear doors to the hotel were locked. Not that that would necessarily have stopped the terrorists. Still, they seem to have preferred low-security to high-security. ...1:21 A.M.
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Monday, November 24, 2008
Mark Krikorian is not impressed with likely Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano's border-control credentials but concedes
[S]he's about as close as any Democrat governor can get to appearing hawkish on illegal immigration.
He speculates:
"It could mean that the Obama administration picked an immigration person for this job because they want to burnish their pro-enforcement credentials to make a more plausible case for amnesty down the road ...."
That would be shrewd. But I wonder--suppose it all miraculously works according to plan. That is, suppose Napolitano succeeds, against all expectations, in controlling the border. The ACLU sues to cripple enforcement in the workplace. It loses! Illegal immigration in effect ceases. The public feels soon confident enough to allow Congressional Democrats to legalize those illegals already in the country. No more living in the shadows. Celebrations in the streets! But because the border is controlled, no new illegal immigrants get in. Guest workers, including agricultural workers, do get in--perhaps with a "path to citizenship." But only in the numbers authorized. The question is: Would the Congressional Dems and their allies be happy?
I'm not sure. ... They'd get 12 million new, mainly Latino voters. Likely Democrats. But that would be it. I suspect there are a lot of Dem pols who would not-so-secretly be rooting for things to not go according to plan--for an amnesty to be accompanied by a breakdown in border control, as it was the last time it was tried, meaning there would be millions more illegal immigrants, mainly Latino, to legalize and empower in future years.. ...
I suppose the answer would depend on whether the new rules allowed existing immigrants to keep bringing in members of their extended families, thereby rapidly expanding the newly-arrived, legal electorate. ...
I'm not saying this scenario is likely to happen--it's a thought experment. The very forces that might be happy to see the border-control part break down (low-wage employers, pols hoping to surf the Latino surge, anti-nationalist libertarians) would try to make it break down. Which is why it probably would. ... 12:17 P.M.
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A job for Anna: New York is still in a state of intense speculation on the central policy question regarding Obama's transition: What does it mean for Vogue? Editor Anna Wintour's "rep" has denied gossip reports that she'll be joining the administration, but that hasn't stopped them. ... She raised some money for the campaign. What might she want? Ambassador to France would be a good fit, no? "The French would deal with her a lot better than the Iceberg Lettuce King of Salinas that W. sent over," says cosmopolitan kf reader Madame S. ... 10:50 A.M.
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Sunday, November 23, 2008
"Franken to Win Recount by 27 Votes": Give Nate Silver points for not playing it safe. ... Update: A new Silver calculation:
The various versions of the model project a Franken win by between 48 and 136 votes once all ballots are re-counted and all challenges are resolved.[E.A.]
There are some disclaimers about high "margins of error." Nobody will notice them if Silver's right. ...11:22 P.M.
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Richardson Vets! [You said this wouldn't happen-ed. Vets for Commerce. That's like being "Hot for D.C."] 1:45 P.M.
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