2009 March | Hoystory

Archive for March, 2009

Mar

Government Motors

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Categories: Democrats, Economics and Government

Last year, satirist extraordinaire Iowahawk wrote up some fake 1970′s-era ad copy for Congressional Motors.

All new for 2012, the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition is the mandatory American car so advanced it took $100 billion and an entire Congress to design it. We started with same reliable 7-way hybrid ethanol-biodeisel-electric-clean coal-wind-solar-pedal power plant behind the base model Pelosi, but packed it with extra oomph and the sassy styling pizazz that tells the world that 1974 Detroit is back again — with a vengeance.
We’ve subsidized the features you want and taxed away the rest. With its advanced Al Gore-designed V-3 under the hood pumping out 22.5 thumping, carbon-neutral ponies of Detroit muscle, you’ll never be late for the Disco or the Day Labor Shelter. Engage the pedal drive or strap on the optional jumbo mizzenmast, and the GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition easily exceeds 2016 CAFE mileage standards. At an estimated 268 MPG, that’s a savings of nearly $1800 per week in fuel cost over the 2011 Pelosi.

What was funny then became a heck of a lot more serious yesterday when President Barack Obama — an accomplished former automotive executive — said that the plans presented by General Motors and Chrysler weren’t good enough.

Obama may be right. The plans may be unrealistically optimistic and doomed to failure. Like many others, I thought the first bailout of the automakers was a mistake and that they should’ve gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I’m not a supporter of the idea that some companies are “too big” or “too important” to fail. Going into bankruptcy doesn’t mean that all GM and Chrysler dealers will close their doors tomorrow, or that your factory warranty is no longer any good. Instead it would allow the companies to get out from under some of their unsustainable labor contracts and trim down and compete.

Instead, President Obama went so far yesterday as to say the federal government would back the manufacturers warrantees. Under exactly what constitutional authority Obama was using to make that declaration was unclear — and no one seemed troubled enough to bother to ask it.

Background briefings on the ouster of GM CEO Rick Wagoner seemed to suggest that the Obama administration’s auto task force may be more interested in forcing GM to make “eco-friendly” automobiles rather than ones people are actually interested in buying.

Wagoner joined GM in 1977, has had a senior role in GM management since 1992, and became CEO of the company in 2000. He is considered responsible for increasing GM’s focus on trucks and SUVs—at the expense of the hybrids and fuel efficient cars that have become more popular in the last couple of years.

But have those cars really become more popular in the last couple of years or were they briefly popular when gas prices neared $5 a gallon? Once gas prices started back down, sales of SUVs and trucks rebounded.

I don’t know what the right answer for the continued success of GM is — small hybrid vehicles or SUVs and trucks — but I’m pretty sure the answer is a combination of both. I’m worried that government bureaucrats will put the president’s interest in “green” technology above that of actually selling automobiles and we’ll end up with billions of taxpayer dollars wasted and no GM or Chrysler to boot. Only the government can bring you the worst of both worlds.

The government has a place in the capitalist marketplace — to lay down the ground rules and make sure everyone abides by them. When the government takes off the referee’s jersey and starts coaching certain players or allowing some players to continue playing with five fouls and not others, that’s when everyone starts getting in trouble.

President Obama believes he can fix this. Of course, he hasn’t been successful at “fixing” anything up to this point in his life, so one wonders if he is buying into his own hype.

In the end, the marketplace will figure all of this out — no matter what the government does. The question we face is how many tax dollars will be thrown down the rathole before our enlightened political class figures this out.

Mar

Predictable

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Categories: Economics

I haven’t looked at what people are blaming today’s market downturn (DJI -254.16 points) on, but I could’ve told you Friday this would happen. Why?

This is why:

Guest lineup for the Sunday TV news shows:
ABC’s “This Week” — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Geithner

We’re lucky that the market didn’t tank more.

Mar

Not exactly an Apollo 13-level attitude

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Categories: Science

The space shuttle Atlantis almost blew up in 1988 due to an identical problem — damaged heat shield tiles — that ultimately brought down the shuttle Columbia 15 years later.

The exhaustive attention NASA now devotes to making sure shuttle heat shields are damage-free and safe for re-entry is a direct result of the 2003 Columbia disaster. But a blacked-out military flight 21 years ago still stands out as a warning to astronauts, engineers and managers, a frightening “close call” that had the potential to bring the shuttle program to an early end.
It was that close.
“I will never forget, we hung the (robot) arm over the right wing, we panned it to the (damage) location and took a look and I said to myself, ‘we are going to die,’” recalled legendary shuttle commander Robert “Hoot” Gibson. “There was so much damage. I looked at that stuff and I said, ‘oh, holy smokes, this looks horrible, this looks awful.’”
He was seeing the worst tile damage any shuttle had ever experienced.
But a perfect storm of poor communications, caused in part by military restrictions that prevented the crew from downlinking clear images showing scores of chipped and broken tiles, ultimately resulted in a flawed analysis on the ground that indicated the crew had nothing to worry about. Flight controllers were not convinced the shuttle was seriously damaged at all. Some engineers apparently believed the astronauts had been misled by poor lighting conditions and grainy TV images.

Read the whole thing, because it turns out that the guys on the ground got it wrong because they required video footage of the damage to be encrypted before it was transmitted. Think about what encryption in 1988 would’ve looked like (bad) and the engineers on the ground thought they were seeing shadows and not damaged tiles.

The main reason I link to this story is because Gibson is a Cal Poly grad and was the speaker at my graduation ceremony in the spring of 1994.

Turns out that he was very lucky to be there.

Mar

You don't say?

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Categories: Environment and Science

I’m flipping channels and come across the ScienceHD channel showing “Snowball Earth.” The summary reads:

Scientists postulate that the Earth was once sheathed in ice and complex animals evolved when the planet thawed, due to the release of carbon dioxide.

Wow, carbon dioxide is good for little cuddly bunny rabbits and other living things? Who would’ve thought it?

Of course, this postulate and its focus on carbon dioxide, as opposed to water vapor, solar activity or cosmic rays shows that it’s merely setting the stage from AGW theory. Of course, humans weren’t driving SUVs to pull “snowball Earth” out of its icy covering its first time. In fact, humans weren’t around at all.

Which brings us back to the religious nature of the AGW crowd. It obviously wasn’t humans that caused this ancient warming, but this time around we know it’s our fault.

Mar

Double standards

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Categories: Democrats, Economics and Media

Last Thursday, the Chicago Tribune published a story looking at White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s stint on the board of directors of Freddie Mac. To say the story paints a troubling picture of cronyism and corruption is an understatement.

In a year-plus tour, Emanuel attended a total of six meetings and made more than $320,000. Compare the outrage over the AIG bonuses in terms of pay per hour worked to what Emanuel got paid for attending six meetings!

And it’s not as though Freddie Mac was a paragon of honest accounting while Emanuel was supposed to be overseeing its operations.

On Emanuel’s watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass.

The accounting scandal wasn’t the only one that brewed during Emanuel’s tenure.

During his brief time on the board, the company hatched a plan to enhance its political muscle. That scheme, also reviewed by the board, led to a record $3.8 million fine from the Federal Election Commission for illegally using corporate resources to host fundraisers for politicians. Emanuel was the beneficiary of one of those parties after he left the board and ran in 2002 for a seat in Congress from the North Side of Chicago.

The board was throttled for its acquiescence to the accounting manipulation in a 2003 report by Armando Falcon Jr., head of a federal oversight agency for Freddie Mac. The scandal forced Freddie Mac to restate $5 billion in earnings and pay $585 million in fines and legal settlements. It also foreshadowed even harder times at the firm.

Many of those same risky investment practices tied to the accounting scandal eventually brought the firm to the brink of insolvency and led to its seizure last year by the Bush administration, which pledged to inject up to $100 billion in new capital to keep the firm afloat. The Obama administration has doubled that commitment.

Is there any doubt that had a similarly situated Republican — say Karl Rove — been at the center of a scandal such as this that the Big 3 networks, CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times would be hitting this 24/7?

And this is one of the rare instances where there is a demonstrable ethical difference between the two parties.

In his final year in office, Clinton tapped three close pals: Emanuel, Washington lobbyist and golfing partner James Free, and Harold Ickes, a former White House aide instrumental in securing the election of Hillary Clinton to the U.S. Senate. Free’s appointment was good for four months, and Ickes’ only three months.

Falcon, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, found that presidential appointees played no “meaningful role” in overseeing the company and recommended that their positions be eliminated.

…

Former President George W. Bush voluntarily stopped making such appointments following Falcon’s assessment of their uselessness.

That’s one for our side.

And, as for the “most transparent administration ever” — well, there’s not so much of that either.

The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel’s time as a director. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were “commercial information” exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

In the country’s current financial situation is there really any competitive disadvantage to Freddie Mac to releasing 8-year-old information? (On a related note: Obama has now signed 10 bills into law and hasn’t let the promised five days for public comment pass before he’s signed any of them.)

The fact this story isn’t on many front pages or on the nightly newscasts is just another sign of how too many media outlets are out of touch with their audiences. I applaud the Chicago Tribune for their reporting — now if they could just get their brethren to follow suit.

Mar

Prove it

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Categories: Democrats and Judges

Sen. Harry Reid has a history of putting his foot in his overlarge mouth on a regular basis when it comes to judges — it’s a minor miracle he still has any teeth left.

Today, Reid stepped in it again.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that John Roberts misled the Senate during his confirmation hearings by pretending to be a moderate — and that the United States is now “stuck” with him as chief justice.

“Roberts didn’t tell us the truth. At least Alito told us who he was,” Reid said, referring to Samuel Alito, the second Supreme Court justice nominated by President George W. Bush. “But we’re stuck with those two young men, and we’ll try to change by having some moderates in the federal courts system as time goes on — I think that will happen.”

Unsurprisingly, Reid offered no specific examples of Roberts’ “lies.” The rest of this is just loghorrea. Who advertised Roberts as a moderate? Not anyone I know. Roberts was always presented as a conservative — a highly qualified conservative. Same with Alito.

Reid goes on to say that Democrats will approve “moderates” to the bench. No they won’t. They’ll nominate liberals. You know it. I know it. Why does Reid even bother with the lie?

Finally, Reid expresses dismay at the fact that Republicans might do to President Obama’s judicial nominees what Democrats did to President George W. Bush’s nominees. Reid accuses Republicans about not living up to their political philosophy. Instead, Reid would like unilateral GOP disarmament. No surprise there.

Reid is a crummy Senator — and he’s up for re-election in 2010. Has he forgotten what happened to his predecessor, Tom Daschle?

Mar

Busybody bureaucrats

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Categories: Government and Idiots

Henry Ford famously declared that you could get a car in any color you wanted as long as it was black. Well, that may not be the case any more.

If you think black is a hot color for a car, you’re not alone. The California Air Resources Board thinks the same thing. And that’s a problem.
The CARB believes the air conditioning systems in black cars work harder and waste more energy than the ones in lighter colored cars.
It also wants the car companies to come up with new, more energy efficent [sic] paints.
But they haven’t been able to come up with a new black paint.
The best the carmakers can do, so far, looks like “mud-puddle brown.”

I’d point out that this is stupid, but that’s pretty obvious.

Will steel gray be next?

Mar

Bay Area evil

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Categories: Crime and Idiots

Last weekend, four police officers were killed were killed by a Lovelle Mixon, a [impressive list of derogatory expletives deleted]. The day before the shooting, Mixon had been tied through DNA to the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

On Wednesday, some of the “good people” of Oakland held a march to honor Mixon.

The event, organized by the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, started at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Uhuru House on 7911 MacArthur Boulevard.

According to the organization’s website, the march was designed to “Uphold the Resistance of the African Community as Represented by Brother Lovelle Mixon.”

If you ever wondered why the Black community in so many major metropolitan cities suffers from a surfeit of black-on-black crime, then look no further. The perpetrators of great evil are heroes to them and the victims are oppressors.

If Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama want to demonstrate their bravery and talk about race relations in America, they’d do well to start in Oakland.

Mar

Obama's not much of a wrestler

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Categories: Abortion, Democrats and Medicine

President Barack Obama’s game of choice is basketball. He’s not much of a wrestler — especially when it comes to “wrestling” with ethics questions, as Yuval Levin noted:

In tonight’s press conference, Jon Ward of the Washington Times asked the president whether he personally wrestled with the ethics of federally funding embryonic stem cell research. Obama’s answer began this way:

Okay. No, I — I think it’s a — I think it’s a legitimate question. I — I wrestle with these issues every day. As I mentioned to — I think in an interview a couple of days ago, by the time an issue reaches my desk, it’s a hard issue. If it was an easy issue, somebody else would have solved it and it wouldn’t have reached me. Look, I believe that it is very important for us to have strong moral guidelines, ethical guidelines, when it comes to stem-cell research or anything that touches on, you know, the issues of possible cloning or issues related to, you know, the human life sciences. I think those issues are all critical, and I’ve said so before. I wrestle with it on stem cell; I wrestle with it on issues like abortion.

This was his discussion of the ethical issues, and what stands out of course is that it contains absolutely no discussion of the ethical issues. What is it he is wrestling with? What is the concern? What does he think of it? What issues “are critical”? What do the “strong moral guidelines” need to involve?
Whatever it is, Obama thinks his executive order takes care of it. He continued:

I think that the guidelines that we provided meet that ethical test. What we have said is that for embryos that are typically about to be discarded, for us to be able to use those in order to find cures for Parkinson’s or for Alzheimer’s or for, you know, all sorts of other debilitating diseases, juvenile diabetes, that — that it is the right thing to do. And that’s not just my opinion. That is the opinion of a number of people who are also against abortion.

The trouble with this is that Obama’s executive order didn’t actually do any of it. Again, it’s not clear what “ethical test” he has in mind, but beyond that it’s not clear what guidelines he has in mind. The order he signed this month has this to say about ethical guidelines:

Within 120 days from the date of this order, the Secretary, through the Director of NIH, shall review existing NIH guidance and other widely recognized guidelines on human stem cell research, including provisions establishing appropriate safeguards, and issue new NIH guidance on such research that is consistent with this order. The Secretary, through NIH, shall review and update such guidance periodically, as appropriate.

In other words, it included no ethical guidelines at all, leaving those to the NIH to decide later. Obama seemed to suggest his rules would allow funding only for the use of cell lines from embryos whose parents turned them over to researchers and were otherwise going to discard them. Whatever you think of that practice, the president’s executive order established no such rule, and many of his supporters have praised him for avoiding it.

Read the rest of Levin’s analysis for the reporter’s follow-up question and the President’s “thoughtful” response.

For the record, President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics is still in operation for a few more months and they’ve posted a corrective notice on some of the distortions of the now-overruled Bush policy that the president (and the media) have been peddling.

Mar

What to cover

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Categories: Media

There’s plenty of reasons why newspapers are struggling nowadays. Just yesterday the Houston Chronicle and Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced layoffs. There will likely be more next week at some newspaper somewhere.

There’s three major reasons behind this decline: the overall economic environment, bad management and the Internet. While part-time, hobbyist bloggers can never replicate even a small daily newspaper, they can highlight and emphasize news that newspapers nowadays are missing because of ideologically homogenous newsrooms.

A couple of cases in point: Last Saturday marked the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War. Unsurprisingly, the left marched and protested. These protests were a shadow of their former glory, because so few Americans are dying in Iraq. A few hundred marched in Los Angeles. Cindy Sheehan managed to draw “more than 200″ here in San Diego. The count was provided by protest organizers, so the actual number is almost undoubtedly lower than that.

The Associated Press sent out a roundup on the national wire.

That same weekend, there were numerous “tea party” protests against President Barack Obama’s proposed budget — but the Associated Press moved no story. Make no mistake, these were no small protests; thousands showed up in some areas. However, these protests weren’t on the national radar.

And it’s not just the big media that’s clueless on this. Take, for example, Sunday’s Connecticut Post:

That centerpiece is this story. How many activists/protesters were there? You have to scroll down to the third paragraph from the end to find out that there were 30. (No, I’m not missing one or more zeroes.) Thirty protesters get a main story, sidebar and two big photos.

There was another protest in Connecticut that day — one of those tea parties. That story was buried inside the paper, and had no photographs. Aside from the different outrages at different topics, the other thing that made this story different was the number: It had an estimated 300 protesters.

So, what happened? The editor planning coverage for the weekend assigned a reporter and photographer to the AIG protest, thinking it would be the bigger draw. The editor was wrong. When, it should’ve been obvious that the AIG protest was a carefully choreographed show nothing was done — by the reporter, photographer or editor. When word undoubtedly came that the tea party protest was big, it was probably too late. No photographer = no front page centerpiece. So the editor went with what they had.

Was there an alternative solution? Once you’re in the situation the Post found itself in, the best they probably could’ve done was to pick a centerpiece-able story from the wire and run the tea party story low on the page and the AIG story inside. Normally, it’d be good journalism to run the locally produced photos on the cover, but good journalism also dictates you don’t over-play a story.

The easy answer would’ve been to be in touch enough with your readers to realize ahead of time that the tea party might be big and to have prepared for it.

The fact that the easy answer wasn’t available is a symptom of the sickness afflicting many newspapers.