Kausfiles

kf Gets Excitable

2009-07-04T07:27:00Z

It's seemed to me that the Obama administration has made a mistake in the framing of the health care issue: 'We'll raise your taxes and in exchange we're going to cut your treatments.' I mean, how could that not have widespread appeal? It's pain/pain! ... This mistake has been replicated, perhaps, in the subsidiary debate over the "public option." I tried to make that argument on bloggingheads yesterday, and boy did I not realize I was getting so overexcited. Don't play it at 1.4X or you'll be calling for a straitjacket. ... Key teaser suggestion: Health care reform is not really about covering the uninsured, and it's not about controlling cost, it's about ... something left-wingers used to understand, before they got Orszombified! ... 12:35 A.M.

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5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11, 12, 13, 14 Palin Theories

2009-07-03T22:41:00Z

I can see ~~5 6 7~~ 8 ~~9 10~~ ~~11 12~~ 13 14 Palin theories ... and counting: 1) She's running for president; 2) She's undergoing fame withdrawal and plans to get more attention in the lower 48; 3) She wants to cash in ($); 4) There's another shoe about to drop; 5) She'll now run against Murkowski for Senate. 6) She needs to tend to her family. 7) She's bonkers. 8) She's preggers. 9) She wants to "effect positive change outside government at this point in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities." 10) Actually being a governor in a recession is no fun. Gives you ulcers. 11) She worried she wasn't giving "Alaska's issues" the attention they deserve, and was being criticized for that; 12) She's "fed up with politics ... the personal garbage" etc.. 13) She wants to fight back without one hand tied behind her back. 14) The Alaska legislature now hates her; ... These theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. ... I have no fish in this hunt. ... Update: Mediaite has an intravenous drip. ... see also HuffPo ... and NRO ... Murphy is morphing! ... The Daily Beast has a mere 11 theories. ...

P.S.: Kurtz is sure! "No way Palin can run for president now." ... Update: Now he asks, "How can these talking heads pop off about the meaning of Palin's resignation when not one of them saw it coming?" ... It's the return of Kurtz vs. Kurtz! ...

P.P.S.: I'm waiting for someone to claim it was all the Scientologists' idea. So far, noone. But the night is young. ... 4:35 P.M.

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Kiss Your Orszag Goodbye

2009-07-03T07:56:00Z

According to National Review's impressive indictment, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill has this payoff for organized labor:

Projects receiving grants and financing under Waxman-Markey provisions will be required to implement Davis-Bacon union-wage rules, making it hard for non-union firms to compete - and ensuring that these "investments" pay out inflated union wages. And it's not just the big research-and-development contracts, since Waxman-Markey forces union-wage rules all the way down to the plumbing-repair and light-bulb-changing level.

Stick the equivalent provision in a health care bill--requiring government-administered union wages for hospital janitors and uniform-launderers as well as nurses--and you can kiss Obama's curve-bending health-care cost-savings goodbye. ... [Thanks to reader A.] 1:42 A.M.

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"Half the U.S. servicemen in Nam lost their virginity there ..."

My BS Detector begin to vibrate and yelp at that sentence in Slate's hit-grabbing Asian babe piece. I understand that the sexual histories of those who went to Vietnam did not necessarily replicate the experiences of my friends, most of whom avoided the draft and went straight to college. Still, I'm skeptical. ... P.S.: The piece reminded me of the NYT "ethics" column in which the normally permissive Randy Cohen suddenly turned on a seemingly innocent questioner:

I'm a white male, straight, and I'm attracted to Asian women. It's a simple question of the sort of look that I find physically attractive. Recently, an Asian friend of mine (male) confided that he found my dating patterns offensive. Am I being racist, or does he have some issues of his own? --Anonymous

Here's what this is not: a simple question about looks. Here's what it is: racism, albeit not in a malicious form. ... [snip] Race is a cultural construct, a set of ideas. Before you try to date Michelle Yeoh, or Margaret Cho, or Madame Chiang Kai-shek, think a little harder about what those ideas are, about what you mean by "Asian."

O-kay! And ... huh? ... I claim the cracked, unexplained out-of-the blue severity of Cohen's response was echoed effectively in the second item of this Steve Martin parody (which was funnier when it didn't have a bright green background). ... 1:05 A.M.

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Olson's Law and the Ricci Vise Vice

2009-07-02T02:40:00Z

Grats to kf role model Walter Olson, who started his Overlawyered blog 10 years ago. The high process costs of litigation are what lawyers--for obvious reasons--habitually leave out of their let's-have-notice-and-a-hearing-for-everything reasoning. One thing Olson does is to put them back in. ... P.S.: Here's a pithy Olson graf on the litigation vise facing businesses, one aspect of which the Supreme Court addressed in the Ricci case:

How are employers supposed to behave when they face a possible discrimination lawsuit no matter which way they turn?
It's a question HR managers and company lawyers are used to facing every day. Would you rather field the legal claims that result from targeted layoffs, or the ones that result from sacking people regardless of performance? Would you rather face a defamation lawsuit for mentioning the reasons for a problem employee's departure, or a failure-to-warn lawsuit for not mentioning them? Will your policy on religious proselytizing in the workplace get you sued by the believers, or by the atheists?

But Justice Anthony Kennedy's solution to this problem in the Ricci case--that a city can't throw out a job test that winds up promoting whites and no blacks unless there is a "strong basis in evidence" that it would lose a subsequent discrimination lawsuit--seems an unsatisfying solution to the litigation vise.

What if a city, after reading the Ricci decision, decides there's just a wee a bit less than a "strong" basis for thinking it will lose a discrimination case, and doesn't throw out the test (lest SCOTUS smack it down)--and then loses the discrimination case anyway? That it was scared to throw out the test doesn't necessarily mean the test didn't have an unjustified "disparate impact" (The evidence might not have been overwhelmingly apparent at the time, for the city could have guessed wrong.) Justice Kennedy seems to have carved out, not a safe haven but an area of uncertainty where the outcome could typically be "lose lose." ...

But, again, maybe I'm confused or missing something. ...

P.S.: I took this item down briefly when I thought for a moment it was wrong. Now I think it is not wrong. ... 7:05 P.M.

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They're having a terrific time at the Aspen Ideas Festival! Ferguson vs. Fallows was *great,* for example. Too bad you're not invited and you're missing it! ... But you can watch some short video highlights of a few speakers here. ... P.S.: Classic Atlantic operation. Not having a fabulous exclusive party--"inspired thinking in an idyllic setting"--but expecting readers to enjoy being third-class voyeurs at your fabulous exclusive party while the invited Atlantic people tell you (now via Twitter) what a good time they're having. ... 11:05 P.M.

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If Gore Had Won the Civil War

2009-07-01T23:16:00Z

Alert reader Z, who is not ill-informed, had a pithy reaction to my perhaps overconfident assertion that if Gore had won in 2000 he wouldn't have invaded Iraq after 9/11:

Gore would have invaded Iraq, or he would have lost in 2004 to...George W. Bush, who would have invaded Iraq. Similarly, had Bush refused to consider invading Iraq in 2002, Gore would have come out for it, would have been the nominee and would have beat Bush in 2004.

Z thinks "Dems were desperate for a military issue to get to the right of the Repubs, and Iraq would have been perfect." ... Hmmm. I tend to think that even if President Gore had wanted to invade Iraq after 9/11 he wouldn't have been strongheaded enough. But he is friends with Marty Peretz. And it's easy to forget how strong the pro-war CFR consensus was in 2002. ...

As for whether Gore would have mounted a successful pro-war challenge to Bush if Bush won and hadn't invaded--well, Gore would have to win the Dem primaries first. How would that have been possible on a pro-war platform? ... The one "Z" scenario I have trouble discounting is a) Gore wins b) doesn't invade c) loses in 2004 to Bush d) who invades. ... 4:27 P.M.

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Wellstone's Curse: Undoing the Right Thing

2009-07-01T02:17:00Z

Rick Hasen worries that the Supreme Court appears ready to strike down, on free speech grounds, a large chunk of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law--the part that bans corporate funding of election season broadcast ads. Amazingly, Justice Kennedy is not the swing vote on this issue, Hasen notes. He's already come out with Scalia and Thomas against the law. He's a done deal. Roberts and Alito-- they're the swing votes! Yikes. Add them to the previous three and you would have a sure majority of 5 even if Obama had nominated Dahlia Lithwick to fill Souter's seat.

Hasen predicts a near nuclear disaster for the goo-goo campaign finance lobby: SCOTUS will nix the whole decades-long attempt to keep corporate and union money out of campaign ads--in effect declaring that it's OK if for-profit corporations and unions use their unlimited funds to run spots attacking specific candidates.

I'm not so sure.

After all, isn't there a pretty obvious "right" answer in these cases--at least an answer that all concerned civic-minded centrists should approve. It's this: restrict ads funded by for-profit corporations. Allow ads funded by non-profit "ideological" corporations (and regular, unincorporated individuals--even the Wylys).

The original McCain-Feingold bill, remember, banned only for-profits. There was a good reason for drawing that line: It's one thing to stop GM,say, from using the millions in profits it generates as a limited liability corporation** to meddle in electoral politics.*** It's another thing to ban political speech by non-profit groups like Sierra Club and the NRA--organizations whose purpose is to let individual citizens meddle in politics exactly as we should want citizens to meddle in politics.

It was the late, beloved and deeply misguided Sen. Paul Wellstone who broadened the original McCain-Feingold ban to include those non-profit advocacy groups. Wellstone successfully tapped into Congressional incumbents' natural desire to block any potentially damaging ad from any source they don't control. McCain and Feingold both voted against Wellstone's change to their bill. ("If I thought it was constitutional, I would have voted for it," said McCain at the time.) The New York Times ed board commanded that "The Senate must undo Mr. Wellstone's damaging amendment." But the Senate for some reason did not obey. The amendment stood un-undone.

Yet now the Supreme Court can undo it, no? That wouldn't be hard. They'd just have to embrace and apply the so-called "MCFL exception"--named after a small nonprofit corporation, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, that the Court seemingly said could distribute pro-life propaganda without limiting the size of the individual donations it accepted, as long as it didn't take for profit corporate money or union money.

And why isn't that exactly what the Court will hold in the fall when it takes up the issue (after punting on it yesterday)? One answer is that the litigant currently before the Court--a non-profit outfit that made an anti-Hillary movie-- has admitted it actually takes for-profit corporate money. They've put themselves on the wrong side of the for profit/non-profit line (perhaps intentionally). If you buy the idea that Roberts and Alito really don't want to uphold any campaign finance laws, then you'd think they would have teed up a different case if they wanted to draw a profit/nonprofit funding distinction. Roberts and Alito don't want to have to say that, "Hey, McCain Feingold is OK as applied to this anti-Hillary group because of its tainted 'for profit' donations, but ...." Which leads to Hasen's speculation that what they're really going to say is that McCain Feingold isn't OK as applied to anybody--non-profit, for-profit, whatever.

But surely they have other tricks they could pull--tricks that would allow them to not approve applying the McCain-Feingold law to this particular 'tainted' litigant while codifying the "MCFL" rule. Here's one: Declare that the "MCFL exception" applies to outfits that get a proportionately insignificant amount of for-profit money--not merely to outfits that get no for-profit money. Then remand to a lower court for a hearing on how much money this particular anti-Hillary group gets from which sources.

The upshot: Ads funded without any for-profit money or union money would be home free--Wellstone's amendment would be unconstitiutional. As for ads that are funded by for-profit corporations and unions ... well, Justices Roberts and Alito could say, come see us again in a few years.

So decided! Next case. ... Or have I missed something? ...

Update: Prof. Hasen responds--

I think if CJ Roberts and Justice Alito just wanted to expand the MCFL exemption, they likely could have gotten some liberal votes for that, and would not have needed to set the case for briefing on a nuclear-type issue

Hmmm. Are we sure the liberals want to expand the MCFL exemption? That would mean expanding constitutionally protected advocacy by rich people at the expense of regulations limiting their spending and "leveling the playing field." Free speech is a dangerous principle once you let it loose. The whole current structure of campaign finance could come unraveled if massive, effective, and uncontrolled "independent" spending by random citizens becomes commonplace, no? ...

Part of the problem, maybe, is that neither side wants to take the obvious, centrist MCFL route. The legalistic left thinks "money isn't speech" and wants to limit political advocacy by the Wylys and Scaifes of the world. The lawyerly right thinks spending on advocacy by faceless for-profit corporations is as sacred as spending by actual human citizens. ...

P.S.: Hasen notes that the Court asked for more briefs specifically on the "nuclear" issue of whether to declare McCain-Feingold's entire ban on "corporate" election ads unconstitutional on its face. But I'm not sure you can draw a blazing arrow between what issues the judges want briefed and how Roberts and Alito will rule in the crunch next year. Maybe the extra briefing is just a way to suck up to Justice Kennedy, or to delay the case until Souter is gone, perhaps in the hope that Sotomayor will be more flexible (or less persuasive). ... Update: Alert reader J adds:

Could it be that the request for briefing on the nuclear issue is in part (at least) directed to forcing the two sides to confront the question of whether they have a backup position that might be more centrist? The court knows that everyone and his brother will file as amici in this round. Is it saying, look, you are looking at the possible destruction of everything, and you know that we are crazy enough, or sufficiently imbued with first amendment spirit, to do that. Are you sure you don't want to give us cover to work out a centrist, practical, solution that will put this issue to bed within shouting distance of reason?

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**--OK, bad example.

***--Similarly, unions are also given a special privilege by the state--the right to act as the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees--that allows them to amass cash. With special privileges come special restrictions, you could argue. If union members formed a non-profit on their own, it would be a different story. 8:08 P.M.

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Defining Rationing Up

2009-06-29T20:13:00Z

Monday, June 29, 2009

Michael Kinsley:

Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he'd get it and you wouldn't, it's rationing.

Works for me. ... 1:26 P.M.

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When in S.F. ... : Willie Brown's column is almost Caen-y! But doesn't this recent party he attended (at the home of a former Secretary of State) seem a) a bit decadent and b) embarrassing?

I went to an unbelievable dinner party at Charlotte and George Shultz's penthouse Monday night for retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, the new secretary of veterans affairs.
The party was a Stanlee Gatti tour de force, complete with fatigue-wearing servers, camouflage table cloths, extras dressed up as snipers and a full Marine color guard and band.

It was like being in Afghanistan.

All this for about a dozen guests. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was there with his wife, Maria Shriver. Gavin Newsom was there with Jennifer, and boy is she showing.

I was seated next to Arnold, and he seemed to be holding up pretty well, considering the nightmare going on up in Sacramento.

The dessert: a chocolate replica of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seal, surrounded with vanilla ice cream and the Golden Gate Bridge in chocolate on each side.

I think it's the "extras dressed up as snipers" that does it. ... [via Lucianne] 1:22 P.M.

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Fire, Ready, Aim: FIAT/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne:

"This weekend we'll be choosing which Chrysler [factory] we'll be using to produce the Fiat 500 aimed at the US market ... We shall probably produce the full Alfa Romeo range. ... We shall probably also be making the so-called crossover, the new 69, when the Alfa flagship comes out, but on a platform shared with Chrysler. The whole range will be re-designed."

He does seem decisive (contrast with GM management style, which Ross Perot famously described as "Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim." I still say the whole thing flops. ... TTAC's commenters are also less than fully supportive. ... 1:20 P.M.

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kf Does the Easiest Thing

2009-06-29T06:55:00Z

So if one of these promising new cancer treatments winds up working 25% of the time, but costs $150,000, will Peter Orszag give to you? ... 12:14 A.M.

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Mark Krikorian on why Chuck Schumer's new get-tough rhetoric on immigration is a fraud:

Schumer also called for a biometric worker verification system, though this is also little more than a marketing gimmick. I'm actually not averse to it, but it's a pie-in-the-sky right now. Instead, to prove seriousness about enforcement, the government needs to implement the actually existing tools right now and upgrade them as time goes on. E-Verify, for instance, would be better with biometric identifiers. But it's darn good now, especially when combined with the Social Security Number Verification Service (SSNVS) and no-match letters, and they're working to integrate more photos (which are, after all, a form of biometric identifier) into the system too, by incorporating passport photos and getting states to provide their digitized driver's license photos. What we need is for Congress to phase in E-Verify for all employers now, something that will take several years to roll out, assuming judges even allow it to go forward. But this administration won't even implement the rule requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify, and the House has rejected a number of Republican amendments to do just that (and also rejected an E-Verify mandate for recipients of TARP funds). So Schumer's got a long way to go before he can overcome the public suspicion that "their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration." [E.A]

The obvious Schumer scenario: Congress decrees an amnesty plus fancy future employment-verification technologies. The amnesty happens, the technologies fail or are blocked. ... Even if you actually think both elements are necessary for immigration reform, wouldn't it make sense to first legislate the worker-verification system, then see if it gets past the Chamber of Commerce's and the ACLU's lawsuits, then see if it works, then (we're into Cory Booker's second term here) talk about the amnesty? ... 12:09 A.M.

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Quote of last week: "What color do we turn our icons now?" Ana Marie Cox, 6/25 ... Hard to believe the new, Twitter-addled Time and Newsweek both missed that one. [via Pareene] 12:08 A.M.

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Edwards sex tape. So disappointing. Just him and a mirror again. ... P.S.: But Rush & Molloy bury the lede--Obama's alleged promise to make Edwards Attorney General. ... Given what had already come out about Edwards and Rielle Hunter even before the Iowa caucuses, this may be one of those promises Obama knew he wouldn't have to keep. ... 12:07 A.M.

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Ten Years at the Mouse: kf's Greatest Hits

2009-06-26T20:57:00Z

Back when kausfiles began, in the spring of 1999, we didn't have any of this fancy blogging software or RSS/twitter#whathaveyou that kids have today.** No sir. We had to hew HTML code out of wood, after walking through the snow for ten miles.

The first entry was on June 26. I posted it from my mother's basement. (But I had been dressed for hours. I swear.) It was a conventional piece,*** with a set-up lede, some worker-paragraphs, a kicker. A few weeks later I ran into Walter Olson, of Overlawyered. He said, "I really admire your site, Mickey. Everyone else is out there desperately trying to put up fresh daily content to attract hits. But you let your posts just sit there. It's dignified--almost stately." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point. I realized maybe I should desperately try to put up fresh daily content to attract hits. So I added "just-written, linked commentary on that day's news"--what I didn't know was a "blog." In 2002, I moved it to Slate, in exchange for the equivalent of Nikki Finke's toenail.

In any case, the gala kf 10th Anniversary, now underway, seems a good time to force myself to assess the highs and lows so far:

Stupidest thing I said: No contest. At least I hope no contest.

Media coverage of the 9/11 attack often emphasizes that it will be a "long time before America gets back to normal," etc. The opposite is likely to be closer to the truth -- we'll get back to normal all too quickly, ...I suspect the story will be off the evening news by Thanksgiving. [9/12/2001]

Feature I shouldn't have let die: Yent-a-matic. Heather Mills and Ron Burkle was a good idea! Still could happen. ...

People I should maybe apologize to: Gary Condit. He was behaving awfully squirrelly. And I was only speculating! But that got pretty intense. I was more caught up in the possibility of his guilt than was justified. (After a long investigation, the police arrested someone else, clearing him.) I remember I once questioned--maybe on a conference call--why Chandra Levy would go jogging if she was about to leave town. A few days later, when I was mourning the sudden death of my colleague Scott Shuger, I realized I'd forgotten to listen to my phone messages. There was a days-old one from Scott, calmly explaining that going for a jog is exactly the sort of thing you do when you're about to leave town. Right. I'd been overexcited. Thank you, Scott.

People who should maybe apologize to me: Matt Yglesias! When John Edwards denied the rumor that he'd had an affair with Rielle Hunter, and called it "made up," I argued this was a poor strategy--even an innocent pol shouldn't go out of his way to challenge the integrity of the press organizations that are after him. It might anger them and cause them to redouble their efforts and actually nail him, or at least accuse him further, with attendant PR hassle. Yglesias argued that I was assuming guilt, and anyway:

No doubt by now we've had all the legitimate news organizations in the country looking into it and it seems that . . . nobody can come up with any evidence.

He then went on to giggle about goat-blowing. ... In the event, of course, the press organizations that were after Edwards (e.g., National Enquirer) redoubled their efforts and nailed him. ... P.S.: I don't think I assumed Edwards' guilt, but I admit it was hard not to because I knew he was guilty. It was the worst-kept secret on the Eastern Seaboard. You'd write about it and then you'd get off-the-record you-can't-use-this calls from credible people confirming it. I suspect that if I were a trained reporter, or just a better reporter, I could have figured out a way to explain to readers (including Yglesias) why I was on Edwards' case without compromising those confidences. I was actually trying to write just that piece when the Enquirer caught Edwards visiting Hunter at the Beverly Hilton.

Best bit of writing: The best-written piece I've published after starting kausfiles was a fake reminiscence of JFK Jr. My friend Ellen Ladowsky and I had the idea. I wrote a draft and sent it to her, but didn't hear anything. Finally I reached her by phone at her mother's house in Canada. She was having some sort of intense discussion and didn't have time to talk. "No, it should be like this," she said, almost annoyed, and hurriedly dictated four or five paragraphs. I had the good sense not to change a word. I suppose if I were Maureen Dowd I would get in trouble for that.****

Best idea: A Fed for payroll tax cuts during recessions:

[E]mpower some independent, non-partisan body to temporarily cut payroll taxes, by one or two percentage points, just as we empower the Federal Reserve Board to cut interest rates.

We could have used that this winter, no? Spending may eventually deliver more punch, but tax cuts that don't even have to go through Congress would undoubtedly be much quicker.***** This must be an old idea. But it's still a good idea. And the great thing about the Web is you don't have to check! You just write "This must be an old idea." ...

Best idea I dropped: Open Source Health Studies. Let everyone with a computer and a bit of paranoia mine a big database to see what correlates with, say, Alzheimer's and what doesn't. I even got an email from someone who seemed to know the subject who said it was possible. It's in a folder. I need to dig it out. ...

Worst case of being spun: Watching from the press area, I thought Gore cleaned Bush's clock in their first 2000 debate. Then I went to the spin room where Stuart Stevens immediately mentioned that Gore hadn't been to Texas with James Lee Witt, as he'd boasted. Didn't that play into the festering press meme that Gore was an insecure embellisher? It sure did. I wrote a goading piece saying this was a test of whether reporters could trash a Dem as they had said they would. (It was a test they passed.)

Since a butterfly flapping its wings could have tipped the 2000 election the other way, and since Gore would have been a better president than Bush, I've been feeling guilty about that piece. It's true that a) there were other reasons Gore "lost" the debate among many viewers--he grunted and sighed obnoxiously, something I couldn't hear in the press area.***** And b) every Dem political pro I've talked with thinks it was inexcusable-- and telling--that Gore boasted about Witt when he knew and was surely told that any new little boast would kill him. Still ... flap, flap ....

Greatest Hit that seems questionable in retrospect: The "Don't Rush Me" Series before the 2000 election. It was fun to run through all the reasons why I was an undecided voter, but in retrospect I shouldn't have been. I got snookered by Tucker Carlson's "If you're going to fuck me you'll have to kiss me first" anecdote into thinking Bush was going to be a surprisingly charming bipartisan compromiser and not a stubborn misguided cuss. Yes, Gore would have been a disaster in his own way, but he wouldn't have invaded Iraq. [Would he have passed health care?--ed No Would he have destroyed the GOP and salted the ground the way Bush has?-ed No Are we in such a bad place now?--ed All good points!]

Thing I'm proudest of: Being part of the angry, You-Tubin' mob that helped stop Bush and McCain's misguided and irreversible illegal immigrant legalization bill. Sorry! ...

That said, these are kf's Greatest Hits, I think:

The Case Against Editors On the Web they can help, but not enough. Don't curate me bro!

Let's Not Save Social Security A means test-for-health care swap looks better every day.

50-50 Forever In which I imagine I've discovered a theory about voting that actually dates from 1929.

Stating the Obvious After 9/11 Norman Podhoretz argued "Israel Isn't the Issue." Of course it is--in large part. And 9/11 changed our stakes in that Mideast conflict. (I wonder if David Greenberg would stand by his criticism today now that Obama has rejected the Podhoretz thesis.)

Gore vs. the Mysterious Forces A Kinsley-approved case against Shrumian populism.

No New Jaguars: The Fence and the Kitchen Sink My attempt at writing a column the way Ann Coulter would--forget the other hand, bombs away. It was an improvement.

I Can't Help Hating Chris Bangle About the crack BS artist who's done more to destroy our urban visual environment than anyone since Philip Johnson. Bangle's finally out of power, but every time I see a BMW--which is a lot around here--I hate him again.

Does Welfare Cause Terrorism Ethnic antagonism + welfare = oppositional culture.

Everyone Was Wrong About McCain Feingold Campaign finance reform isn't what we thought it was.

Help, I'm a Snob Like Obama! And Bob Wright. ... Mayhill Fowler opened up a can of worms! I hope I get points for failing to come up with any sort of satisfying conclusion.

Bold Decisive Disasters The scales fell from my eyes when I realized the suspect methods Bush used to push "comprehensive immigration reform" were the same suspect methods he had used to push the Iraq War.****** A little late, I realize.

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**-- And Bing! We didn't have Bing.

***--The piece actually ran in the NYT, which graciously let me post it on my site 24 hours later. I wonder if they still do that.

****--The piece was originally published under the byline J.William Medley, a fictional Washington pundit I borrowed from his creator, Jefferson Morley.

*****--Who needs editors when you have enemies! Alert Reader noticed that I'd said "spending cuts" when I meant "spending." Media Matters says an immediate post-debate poll showed Gore narrowly "won" the first debate among viewers (as I thought he had). The same survey suggested that Bush gained more "favorability" ground. I've changed the wording to fudge that issue (adding "many"). The point is that Gore's sighing and grimacing turned off lots of people--including my own mother (no Bush fan). The sighs and grimaces were inevitably replayed over the succeeding days, damaging Gore further.

******--Also when I read this book. 2:54 P.M.

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The UAW Has A Long Memory

2009-06-26T17:46:00Z

The U.A.W., now a major GM shareholder, has delivered its final punishment to those auto workers who dared move to Spring Hill, Tennessee and show up the rest of the union by building reliable car without Wagner-style work rules. GM's new small car will be made in Michigan, and the Spring Hill plant will close. .... P.S.: Nikke Finke has a better chance of making money producing this car than GM does. ... 3:52 P.M.

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Sanford's Insurance Policy

2009-06-25T20:36:00Z

South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who would succeed Mark Sanford should Sanford resign, needs to update his web site! His blog still has Sanford "hiking along the Appalachian Trail" (though Bauer is waiting for "a more definitive idea of what part of the Trail he was on"). ... P.S.: With his campaign to allow "I Believe" license plates, Bauer seems ripe for liberal mockery. And even papers that have demanded Sanford's resignation don't seem to have much confidence in him. The Spartanburg Herald Journal, after calling for Sanford to step down, writes:

“South Carolinians cannot be sure that Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has the capability to lead the state in this recession. They can only hope that he will be up to the task.“

They can pray! ... Update:

"He’s an attractive, conservative Republican, single, straight — and he has a lots of attractive women that want to be his friend on his public Facebook and MySpace page," said [Bauer strategist Chris] LaCivita. "What’s their complaint? I’ll tell you — they're jealous."

1:46 P.M.

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Wagner Act Unionism is bringing its benefits to the Bay Area, where the BART transit system may go on strike despite having negotiated what seem to be generous wages and benefits:

A top-scale station agent and top-scale train operator each make $30.01 per hour, $62,860 a year, in base pay. The transit system also pays 100 percent of the so-called employee contribution toward pensions — an amount equivalent to 7 percent of a salary — though many other California public agencies require workers to pick up some or all of that contribution toward their state pensions.

Overall, BART employees - including managers and hourly workers - get average total annual pay of $71,633, including overtime, and BART picks up an average of $48,000 a year for each worker's benefits, the transit system said.

Workers contribute $81.90 a month toward medical insurance.

But for all that the taxpayers get a finely-wrought mesh of work rules:

Antiquated work rules hurt BART finances by ramping up overtime, BART officials said.

They point to rules requiring that two workers remove seat covers and backing for cleaning. A utility worker unsnaps the cushion. A journeyman mechanic is called in to remove two screws for the seat backing.

Among cleaning crews, a worker in one job classification cleans inside stations and another worker in another classification cleans outside the roof line of stations.

This isn't an example from the 1950s. It's an example from this week. Why would anyone fail to support a "card check" reform designed to encourage the spread of these practices? They worked in Detroit, right?...

Update: Here is a searchable database of BART salaries. ... It's the #1 most-viewed page in the Contra Costa Times at the moment, so it might be slow to load. ... 2:02 P.M.

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First hit, best hit. ... 8:36 P.M.

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No Time for Amnesty?

2009-06-25T03:56:00Z

All Going According to Plan? According to The Hill, Democrats are worried "that they will not be able to accomplish the entire agenda leaders set for 2009." And "comprehensive immigration reform"--i.e. legalization of illegals--is so far down the list it barely gets mentioned as one of the agenda items they are worried will fall off:

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, has pushed hard for the Senate to take up immigration this year. But White House officials have suggested that the issue will wait for a while.

“We know the votes aren’t there right now,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday.

The other far reaching and calamitous Dem initiative--pro-union labor law revision, including "card check" and mandatory arbitration--isn't mentioned by The Hill at all, which actually seems vaguely troubling for opponents. Publicity is not the friend of labor unions in this fight, after all. If 60 Senators agree on a "compromise" to placate labor, it will be a compromise they will probably want to keep hidden and then push through quickly. ... 9:15 P.M.

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Faster Scandal

2009-06-24T23:17:00Z

Josh Marshall's TPM has been presciently keeping the undernews fires burning on the Sanford scandal, even when the mainstream media (MSM) was buying the story that the governor had been hiking the Appalachian trail. But reading over TPM's post "Sanford Press Conference Leaves Unanswered Questions," I was struck by one thing: How uninteresting all the remaining questions are.** "[W]ould [Sanford] have stuck to the Appalachian story" if he could have gotten away with it? Duh! "[D]id he voluntarily tell the State's reporter that he had been in Argentina" or did she look at his luggage tags? Did he see his paramour on earlier taxpayer-funded junkets to Latin America? Other analysts wonder if he used taxpayer-funded gas to drive to the airport. Not sure anybody cares.

We have Faster News and Faster Politics and Faster Scandal. It seems likely that in the course of about 48 intriguing hours those who follow the news have basically learned everything important they need to know about the Sanford mess. He was in Buenos Aires. He cheated on his wife. He really seems to have been in love with this Argentinian. He's out of the 2012 presidential race. Things that ten years ago would have dribbled and drabbed out over the course of days or weeks now hit the Web within minutes. What's left?

Even the story about how scandals happen faster these days has already been done--by TPM, about 29 minutes ago.

There are some obvious implications to Faster Scandals. For one thing, they lead to Faster Comebacks. (Though that won't happen if, like John Edwards, you successfully prolong the suspense, leaving key details--like paternity--hanging for months and even years.) But there are also unanswered questions! Most importantly, what does Faster Scandal mean to Jerry Skurnik's "second electorate"--the one that doesn't follow the news and won't find out about the Sanford scandal until either a) they see it briefly on the nightly news or the front page of their MSM paper tomorrow, or b) Sanford runs for national office years from now, if he runs, in which case a significant segment of voters may suddenly discover that he's an adulterer (the way they discovered that Giuliani was an adulterer at an absurdly late date, namely the GOP primaries of 2008).

In general, you'd think Faster Scandal would mean diminished scandal. The rule of thumb for disaster spin has always been to get the whole story out fast--and now it typically gets out fast, whether the pol at the center of the scandal wants it to or not. A weeks-long story is now a one-day shotgun blast. (Edwards may be an exception in part because reporters have been reluctant to cause more pain to his wife and haven't bothered to smoke out all the key facts.) Back when the editor of the LA Times had a motto of "Do It Once, Do It Long, and Do It Right," it was a scandal-killer, in part because it avoided the extended period of uncertainty in which the media's tom toms of doom are beating and wavering sources can be panicked into coming forward. Now the technology of news has conspired to make the LAT's misguided motto the normal course of events.

But it's also possible that by blunting the initial impact of scandal's like Sanford's--and restricting it largely to Skurnik's first, informed electorate--the increasing speed of scandal means that when the second uninformed electorate finally does learn about it--say, during Sanford's 2016 presidential run--the damage will be all the greater. The news will seem fresher to more of them, because it didn't have sufficient impact back in 2009 to have been processed by everyone. ...

**--Yes, there is still the issue of Maria, who she is, etc. Photos tk. But even that is less interesting now, with so much of the story already out.

P.S.--Was it really about the sex, governor? Do you know anyone who's been to Buenos Aires recently and not wanted to stay there? I know four or five people who returned to California's alleged paradise only reluctantly. ... 5:07 P.M.

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Iran: The Revolution is Not a Flash Mob

2009-06-24T06:51:00Z

From Nico Pitney's blog yesterday:

5:20 PM ET -- A word about the past two days. In ordinary times, the violence in the streets on Sunday and Monday would have been shocking. But compared to Saturday's massive outpouring, the turnout of demonstrators has been significantly smaller. There is a good reason for it.

Over the past week, the reformist rallies that have succeeded were those scheduled days in advance, with turnout aided by massive word-of-mouth promotion. Today's mourning rally for Neda, on the other hand, was announced only this morning on Karroubi's social networking sites. In the midst of a near-complete media and technological blackout, these large demonstrations need time to develop. [E.A.]

I guess Twitter and Facebook are not enough. ... 12:04 A.M.

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Aslan v. Dickey, Part II:

Reza Aslan on MSNBC yesterday:

"First of all, Ahmadinejad doesn`t even have the national security clearance to even look at Iran`s nuclear portfolio, let alone make any decisions about it. The president doesn`t have national security briefings in that regard."

Chris Dickey in his recent Newsweek piece (which Aslan praised as "brilliant"):

According to a European intelligence source, early in Ahmadinejad's first term, the man leading the country's nuclear negotiations presented several options about how and how fast Iran's nuclear program should proceed. Ahmadinejad said there was only one option: full-scale industrial production. Khamenei's response: Yes, that's what we will do.

So which is it? ... 12:10 A.M.

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The Nikki Finke-GM Bailout Connection!

2009-06-24T06:00:00Z

'If Nikki Finke is worth $14 M, then I'm worth ... ': Even The Wrap's Sharon Waxman seems almost happy that DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com blogger Nikki Finke has had a big payday. Green shoots! It's lucky Finke is not a cantankerous person. ... Actually, their interview is fabulously tense and confrontational. ...

P.S. Gawker's Gabriel Snyder is skeptical of the $14 million figure reported by Waxman's site. ...

P.P.S.: I'm more interested in the indirect Rattner/Penske connection revealed in an earlier Gawker post on Finke's deal. It seems Obama auto czarito Steve Rattner's firm put money into a firm run by Finke's new owner, Jay Penske, the son of Detroit auto entrepreneur Roger Penske:

[Jay] Penske's Mail.com Media Corporation took a $35 million investment from Steve Rattner's Quadrangle Group in September; but we hear he's been having trouble finding properties to buy.

Hmm. A few months later Rattner helped restructure/dismantle General Motors, and Jay's father Roger wound up buying its Saturn brand. All innocent I'm sure! And Roger Penske has a record of business success that GM (and Rattner) can only envy. ... 11:23 P.M.

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The Truth About Cars on why that J.D. Power and Associates "Initial Quality" survey is not worth paying that much attention to. ... 11:45 P.M.

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Ward Connerly Is Back

2009-06-22T22:30:00Z

Atlantic's Matthew Cooper may think that "affirmative action in its myriad forms is here to stay," but Ward Connerly and the Arizona legislature seem to have other ideas. The legislature has put an anti-preference initiative on next year's ballot. ... 4:06 P.M.

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kf Asymptotically Approaches Twitter

2009-06-22T04:04:00Z

Like CNN, Twitter seems like a pretty joyless place--but like CNN used to be, it's good in a crisis. ("CNN's Shocking Suck-Up to Iran's Fascists"? Marcus Brauchli: Get Howie Kurtz on the story stat! Oh wait). ... Even good writers turn into bad writers on Twitter. But after following the #iranelection feed (and Sullivan and Pitney) until bleary, I find it hard to have a thought much longer than seven score characters.

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Hillary Was So Well-Behaved Until Now: Sid Blumenthal to State? He may know things [raised eybrow] about Ahmadinejad that you don't .... But if I were Obama I might think twice. ... 10:37 P.M.

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Reza Aslan praises as "absolutely brilliant" a Chris Dickey Khamenei profile that seems to conclude "Ahmadinejad would have won anyway" (notwithstanding "indications of fraud"). Yet Aslan has claimed the election "was stolen by Ahmadinejad’s supporters," specifically the Revolutionary Guard, in what amounted to a "military coup." Which is it? ...10:38 P.M.

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NYT buries story that Sonia Sotomayor pushed for more very-low-income units in Harlem and Bronx housing developments--deeply misguided when the goal is to recreate a class mix and end concentration of poverty. She's also exercised by affirmative action contracting numbers. "'Extreme partisan' on questions of class and ethnicity." Yikes. ... Are conservatives banking too much on her being such a b----- that she won't convince other justices? ... 11:09 P.M.

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"Don't believe what you've heard about a GOP in disarray." The Republicans have

history on their side. There are only a handful of times in our nation's past when the party that won the White House hasn't lost big the following midterm election. That would spell disaster for President Obama's agenda. [E.A.]

Who said that? The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in a fundraising email I just got. It will come as news to the GOPs. ... 11:10 P.M.

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If John Edwards were alive today ... : The "New GM" tries to slough off product liability claims. ... 11:14 P.M.

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Super-filtered kaus feed! Meanwhile, my own actual twitter feed is such a fire-hose-like stream of apercus that they can only be highlighted here. The highlights: ... OK, there are no highlights. ... Except maybe the Mr. Bubble item which has not been lawyered (and which was stolen from a friend). ... 11:22 P.M.

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Iran: The Non-Gandhian Way?

2009-06-19T22:57:00Z

Steve Clemons appears to be urging a non-Gandhian approach on the Iraqi opposition. ... 4:06 P.M.

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Psst! Tsi-ay Inda-Kay Orking-Way: What if they came out with a study showing that No Child Left Behind is working--raising test scores without hurting high- or low-achievers--and nobody paid attention? (Except Education Week). ... 4:05 P.M.

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New Chrysler owner FIAT tries its hand at viral advertising. ... [Thanks to reader J.] 4:04 P.M.

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Obama's Dems: So It's Quotas and Welfare Again?

2009-06-19T08:28:00Z

Stimulus Bill Race Quotas? Did you know** that CalTrans, the huge state agency that spends billions in federal highway construction funds, "sets a quota of having 6.75 percent of contracts go to women or members of [a] targeted group--African American, Asian-Pacific American, and Native America, but not Latinos or other groups." Not a "goal"--a quota. They are being sued. But why is a lawsuit even required? Stimulus money appears to be involved. And aren't "quotas" are what every poll-tested politician says he or she is against? Don't you think if the GOPs (or anyone) made a big stink about the stimulus bill's race quotas, Obama would back off? ... Plus it's another bone he could toss to Latinos! ... P.S.: If "quotas" have always tested badly in polls, the words "affirmative action" has often tested much better. But not in the recent Quinnipiac poll, which found that

American voters say 55 - 36 percent that affirmative action should be abolished

Backfill: Jennifer Rubin explains how explicit race quotas in contracting survived the Supreme Court's 1995 Adarand decision, which many people (me too) thought had killed the practice. "Strict scrutiny" isn't what it used to be. ... No doubt Justice Sotomayor will clean up this mess.

**--You wouldn't know if you relied on the L.A. Times, which apparently hasn't covered the CalTrans quota controversy (though its competitors have). ... 1:40 A.M.

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Why was Pennsylvania relatively unscathed by foreclosures in 2008 while neighboring Ohio was hammered? A friend at a conference I recently attended pointed out the contrast. I don't know the answer, but it might be instructive. ... Update: Thanks to Tom Maguire, who forwards a newspaper article and a summary of three Fed studies on the topic. Regulatory differences are suspected. ... 1:54 A.M.

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Los Angeles Democrats have succeeded in using the state's fiscal crisis to recreate welfare, some thirteen years after the hated federal AFDC entitlement was abolished. The local Dem-controlled Board of Supervisors is proposing to pay mothers for "caring for their own children"--which was the original idea of the welfare program when it was inserted into the New Deal's cash-granting structure in 1935. It seemed to make sense--caring for children is a type of work, after all. Except that subsidizing non-working parenthood--especially single motherhood--turned out to be a recipe for epic social disaster (something that was predicted by not a few dissenting antipoverty activists back in FDR's day). In 1996, Congress finally decided the better policy was to require mothers receiving welfare to work, outside the home, even if that was more expensive than just mailing them checks. At the time, the favored liberal Democratic battle cry was a demand for more day care. But now the Dem Board of Supervisors' proposes to cut the day care and just mail out the checks again, at least to all mothers with two children under age 6. (Message: Have a second kid and you don't have to go to work!).

Doesn't Obama's HHS Department have some say in this? Does he really want to resume subsidizing the culture of dependent single motherhood? ... P.S.: If he plays his cards right he could come out for both welfare and quotas in the same week, and give the GOPs a fair shot. ... [via Drudge] 2:07 A.M.

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WaPo media critic Howard "I'm A Star--The Rules Don't Apply to Me" Kurtz, who failed to disclose that he is paid by CNN when he defended CNN in an online chat this week, promises to disclose in the future:

"That was an oversight and won’t be repeated."

We've heard that tune before! ... P.S.: My beef with Kurtz isn't so much that he has a giant crippling conflict of interest (one that would never be tolerated for a Post reporter writing about, say, GM). It's that he has a giant crippling conflict of interest while he runs around chastising other journalists for minor conflicts of interest. Franklin Foer called him an "East German figure skating judge." He once tried to zing me for an Amazon Associates payment of $1.92 (which I'd overzealously disclosed). ... P.P.S.: The Post's Omblogger Andy Alexander produces a laboriously crafted corporate PR-style paragraph defending his employer--

An archival examination of his writings for The Post shows that when CNN has received a significant mention in his columns or stories, they typically end with this disclosure: "Howard Kurtz hosts's CNN's weekly media program, ‘Reliable Sources.'" [Weasel-word emphasis added.]

a) BS; b) What about stories trashing CNN's competitors (without 'significantly' mentioning CNN)? c) This isn't the sort of conflict--getting a paycheck from one of the companies you are covering--that disclosure is held to cure, according to the normal rules of journalism. ...

Update: Bill Wyman argues--and he has a good example--that what Kurtz doesn't write about matters just as much. ... 2:36 A.M.

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Imagine how cool President McCain would be in the Iran crisis. ... Would he go on TV to declare "we are all Moussavists now," or suspend all government activities while he parachuted into Tehran? ... 3:08 A.M.

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John Edwards Father's Day Special!

2009-06-18T04:21:00Z

At Least He** Had a Lede to Bury: John Edwards thinks he can come back. And somehow in theoretically humble disgrace comes off as smugger and phonier than ever! (Sample: "The two things I'm on the planet for now are to take care of the people I love and to take care of people who cannot take care of themselves.") ...

He thinks "every day" about what form his future role in activism or public life could take, but "right now, a lot of that is unanswerable." ... [snip]

"If I can help the most by working quietly, that's what I'll do. If as time goes by I can be more helpful with a public role, that's what I will do."

WaPo reporter Alec MacGillis pathetically agreed in advance not to talk about the things Edwards didn't want to talk about (like the second tranche of now-festering lies he told in the course of his Nightline "confession"). MacGillis also asserts, as fact, that Edwards promoted health-care reform "more aggressively than anyone on the presidential campaign trail." True? ...

But MacGillis also buries a solid lede: The last web page of his piece features an impressive, reported survey of broken Edwards promises to various actual impoverished Americans--scholarship programs cancelled, Katrina foreclosure cases unaided--complete with victim quotes. ("I just thought he was trying to cover his tracks while he was a candidate. ... It was probably all for show in the end." ).

Who was the editor who decided to call this piece "Hope from a Humbler Perch" instead of, say, "In Defeat, Edwards Left String of Broken Promises"?

Note to Gawker: No, he can't have a Slate Rehab column. Sorry. We're saving the slot for Rattner. ...

**Correction: Reporter MacGillis is a he, not a she. [Thanks to reader B.].. 10:24 P.M.

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