Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in Iran, and other places in South America, like Chavez is running down in Venezuela. People become more dependent on the government so that they’re easy to manipulate. And they keep voting for more government because that’s where their security is. When our immigrants get here, they’re worried, because they see it happening here.
“I am hopeful that as President Obama grows in office, he will eventually turn away from despots like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, and Zelaya, and give the United States’ full-throated support to the people of any country who are fighting for the same values we cherish and defend in America. The people fighting for freedom around the world, in Iran and Honduras, should never have to wonder which side America will choose between freedom and tyranny.
“President Obama’s call for the reinstatement of Zelaya is a slap in the face to the people of Honduras. And the resolution written by the Organization of American States tramples over the hopes and dreams of a free and democratic people.
“The rule of law is working in Honduras. President Obama should not undermine the democratic institutions that guarantee freedom by forcing an illegitimate President back into power.
“This is not an ideal transition, but Hondurans are adhering to their constitution. The United States should support the Honduran people and their legitimate leaders in their brave and heroic stand for freedom and the rule of law.”
So, let’s see, a military coup of a democratically elected president is democracy in action, while people voting for their interests is non-democratic. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Senator DeMint believes there’s only real democracy where the people support things he agrees with.
A law recognizing same sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions went into effect yesterday in Washington DC. It passed the DC council in May, but the US Congress had 30 days to rule on it and have not. DC does not allow same sex marriages.
Same sex marriage foes in Maine say they have enough signatures to stop the recently signed bill from going into effect and forcing a statewide vote in November.
Massachusetts Attorney General Coakley is suing the US to try to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). I’m not sure how this will turn out, but perhaps it will prod President Obama to act more quickly (he has said he wants to get rid of DOMA).
Let me also put up a couple of graphs on the support for gay marriage and civil unions in the states (from a paper by Lax and Phillips):
which shows a weighted average of support (click on it to see it better), and:
which shows how the support has changed over time. Support for gay marriage in Maine is at 49%, so the vote should be close. Support for gay mariage in Massachusetts is now at 56%, up from about 33% in 1994-6–it’s easy to see why MA is the state suing over DOMA.
I also find it interesting that Rhode Island is the only state in New England without gay marriage (either now or set to start in the future) and yet it seems to have the second highest support (with 53% supporting it).
This will be the first of x posts (with x yet to be determined, but at least one) trying to put together some form of story. I will update it at some intervals (once a week perhaps–it will partially depend on whether anyone reads this and/or comments) and put the current extent on the story page. Here’s the first installment:
The door closed behind him as Fred walked along the tulipped path. He turned around and there was no door. He turned around again and there were no tulips. He thought a moment and his foot slammed into a tree even though he had stopped. He glanced up and the sky looked him square in the eye.
His companion dragon roared up at the sky in anger and confusion. Fred decided that things were getting just a bit too weird and closed his eyes to think a minute. The ground then decided to shake things up. Fred decided that thinking was getting him nowhere, so he jumped on the dragon, who he had never met before, flew up into the sky, which was still glaring at him, and asked the dragon to burn everything in sight. Since the dragon had also closed her eyes, she just flapped her wings. She also informed Fred that she had nothing to burn everything with and who exactly was he? Fred answered that he was Fred and they seemed to be companions, although he didn’t remember ever meeting her before and who was she? The dragon said her name was Tulip and informed him that she had just come through a doorway looking for a bit of tea. And …(TBC)
And since it seems to be Friday, here’s a poem:
Life is just running round the clock
You go around just to get back
You go to sleep just to wake up
And wake up just to make money.
Money is made just to get things
Which are meant to make you happy
So you can make it through the day
And you might have time to sleep. Just.
Note: Both images are from Wikipedia (the dragon from here and the tulips from here). The dragon was made by Gian Luca Ruggero, aka Actam, and the tulips picture was taken by John O’Neill with the following copyright information:
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License“.
The Boston Globe has an article about John Henry’s wedding:
When they were initially drawing up plans in May, Henry’s event planners had asked only that a few spots on Lansdowne and Ipswich streets be blocked off for parking to fit in generators that would power the reception, which took place under a massive outfield tent. Henry is, by nature, an unassuming multimillionaire not prone to diva demands.
The city, however, had other designs. They looked over the guest list of about 400 names, which included a who’s who of Boston celebrities, with a tinge of Hollywood as well. The wedding band was Maroon Five. The night would be capped off with a fireworks display.
This really isn’t that big of a deal, but just shows how the Red Sox are treated. How many other people do you think would be allowed to have a fireworks display?
To really see this, you have to look at more cases:
Back in 2003, the Red Sox asked the city if they could use Fenway as a concert venue for Bruce Springsteen. The city, of course, agreed because it was a once in a lifetime event. It then became a yearly thing with one or two concerts a year. This year there are five nights of concerts, which does seem to contradict this (that’s Larry Cancro, Senior Vice President for Fenway Affairs):
One thing, however, seems certain: Fenway Park is a one-time-a-year venue. “I do not see the circumstances under which we could ever have more than two in one year,” Cancro confirms.
The city seems to be fine with this.
When the Red Sox were trying to expand and contemplated using part of Yawkey Way as a bit of an add-on, the city made it happen. If you go look at the Red Sox you’ll see what should be a weird thing, Yawkey Way, a public street, is open only to Fenway Park ticket holders on game days (for a bit before and during the game).
When the Red Sox said they wanted a new stadium, Menino was against it if the neighbors were against it. Well, unless it was the Fenway where he was all for it despite neighborhood opposition. The Red Sox also got the city and state to pledge millions of dollars to help.
At this point, I should say that the new owners are much better than the old ones. Which means they consider their neighbors a bit, as opposed to not at all.
Looking at comments to that first article you’ll see the usual remark to any complaints by people in the neighborhood:
So, if you’re so against all the events at Fenway, why live there? It’s been around for nearly 100 years, so you probably had notice that there was a large structure in your neighborhood that seems to attract a good many people for some form of entertainment … unless you’ve lived there since 1900.
You should notice two problems with this:
It’s comparing an institution to an individual. By the time I moved out of the Fenway (it got too expensive, like most of Boston), I had lived there long enough so that all of the players had changed, there had been a few different managers, there were different owners. So as individuals, I had been in the neighborhood longer than almost anyone on the Red Sox payroll (and there were people who had lived in the neighborhood for 50+ years). If instead you want to look at institutions, there were apartment buildings in the Fenway neighborhood before the Red Sox moved in.
Things work both ways. I knew to expect certain things from the Red Sox and their fans when I moved in, but the Red Sox also should expect certain things since the stadium is located so close to a residential neighborhood. And those expectations are controlled by city ordinance: I should be able to expect that the Red Sox should live up to their promises and abide by city guidelines in terms of noise and control of their patrons. If a bar was as remiss as the Red Sox have been in the past, they would have been shut down (as I said before, the current owners are much better than the old ones).
Jeff Jacoby has another article downplaying/denying global warming which seems to be almost wholly based on this article in the Wall Street Journal.
I’m not a scientist in this field, so I’m going to farm out a lot of the rebuttals:
Much of the denialist information is based on a book by Ian Plimer, which is discussed here.
Some of the questions come from Steve Fielding who is discussed here.
A lot of the discussion is now around the fact that an economist at the EPA wrote a paper that isn’t being included in reports. That’s being discussed here (it’s suppression if an unsolicited report by a non-scientist isn’t included in scientific reports!).
Instead, I’m just going to include some graphs based on the data here.
The first shows the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere starting in 1880 (the numbers are in parts per million):
The second shows temperature above the average (where the base is average world temperature from 1961-1990–in hundredths of an absolute degree):
Wow, there does seem to be a relation doesn’t there. The temperature graph shows how much variation there is from year to year, but also shows the unmistakable trend (this is obvious from the line which is the ten year average–that’s why it starts in 1890). Notice that there is no trend down these last few years (this is true even if you look at a 3 year moving average).
The last graph looks at the relation between CO2 and temperature:
The situation in Honduras is still confused with some in the government still insisting that it was not a coup:
Roberto Micheletti, the veteran congressional leader who was sworn in by his fellow lawmakers on Sunday to replace Mr. Zelaya, seemed to plead with the world to understand that Mr. Zelaya’s arrest by the army had been under an official arrest warrant based on his flouting of the Constitution.
“We respect the whole world, and we only ask that they respect us and leave us in peace,” Mr. Micheletti said in a radio interview, noting that previously scheduled elections called for November would go on as planned.
but the world isn’t buying it, with no official recognition of the new leaders. I still don’t see how the new leaders thought this would work: the involvement of the army pretty much guarantees that the first impression is that of a coup (and you would think they could point to something in their constitution).
The Guardian Council in Iran has certified the election of Ahmadinejad. It’s obvious that the powers in Iran have decided that they are going to push through (that was a pretty quick ‘recount’ wasn’t it?) and perhaps try to reconcile with some of the opponents afterwards. And jail a good chunk of the protestors, while saying this is all a foreign movement.
US troops are not even close to being out of Iraq, but they are now officially out of its cities and towns. With the recent upsurge in violence, it remains to be seen if Iraq will be peaceful and stable. I do think the removal of US troops will not hurt, but that doesn’t mean things will get better.
I’m with Hilzoy, I’m confused about what’s going on in Honduras:
Mr. Zelaya’s ouster capped a showdown with other branches of government over his efforts to lift presidential term limits in a referendum that was to have taken place Sunday. Critics said the vote was part of an illegal attempt by Mr. Zelaya to defy the Constitution’s limit of a single four-year term for the president.
Early this month, the Supreme Court declared the referendum unconstitutional, and Congress followed suit last week. In the last few weeks, supporters and opponents of the president have held competing demonstrations. The prosecutor’s office and the electoral tribunal issued orders for the referendum ballots to be confiscated, but on Thursday, Mr. Zelaya led a group of protesters to an air force base and seized the ballots.
When the army refused to help organize the vote, he fired the armed forces commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez. The Supreme Court ruled the firing illegal and reinstated General Vásquez.
As the crisis escalated, American officials began in the last few days to talk with Honduran government and military officials in an effort to head off a possible coup. A senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the military broke off those discussions on Sunday.
First I’d like to insert a bit of information from here:
President Mel Zelaya wants to reform the constitution, including changing the term limits to allow him to run again. His plan is to start this weekend with a non-binding referendum that could lead to a vote in November that would start the constitutional reform process.
In Honduras, it’s a battle of the President vs. the Congress and Supreme Court. The military is caught between the two sides. Constitutionally, the president commands the military. However, the Congress and Supreme Court have both told the military to not follow “illegal” orders from the president. This is the definition of an institutional crisis, and both sides know that the military could determine the outcome.
So, I understand that this was a big deal. The reason I’m puzzled is why there was this jump from institutional back and forth to coup. The leaders in Honduras must have known that the world leaders would not support this, so why didn’t they go slower by starting some form of impeachment hearings or bring in moderators from outside the country (such as the OAS or UN or …). What was the hurry?
The person who wrote ‘Bringing Down the House’, Ben Mezrich, is now writing a book about the start of Facebook. ‘Bringing Down the House’ is a bit nototious for its ‘literary license’ with truth and it seems the new book won’t be any different. I really like the way he responded to critics:
Last year, presented with evidence that certain happenings in “Bringing Down the House” were essentially made-up, Mezrich responded: “I took literary license to make it readable.” He also said, “The idea that the story is true is more important than being able to prove that it’s true.”
That second quote could be a definition of truthiness. I’m ready to use it in all sorts of situations. For example, I think it makes sense that heavier things fall faster so I’m going to start saying it’s true. Thanks, Ben.
In some ways, the thing that makes what’s happening in Iran (The Lede has been a very good place to get information, but won’t put up anything new over the weekend) so bad is that Iran has more freedom than most of the countries in the Middle East. Women have many more rights and there is some democracy. That’s why there was some hope with this election, because there was the possibility of a peaceful transition to a country with even more freedom. That hope seems to be gone.
In general I think President Obama has reacted well to the situation. Given the history of the US in Iran he could not overtly support the opposition, but now that the suppression has become more violent he can speak more bluntly.
It’s also good to see old anti-war people weighing in, such as Joan Baez:
It seems that a moon of Saturn has salt water in it:
For the first time, scientists working on NASA’s Cassini mission have detected sodium salts in ice grains of Saturn’s outermost ring. Detecting salty ice indicates that Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which primarily replenishes the ring with material from discharging jets, could harbor a reservoir of liquid water — perhaps an ocean — beneath its surface.
So here’s a picture of Enceladus showing the jets of water in false color (all of the images are from: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute):
and here’s another image of water jetting out:
and here’s a picture of the moon itself:
and one more where it’s just behind another of Saturn’s moons, Dione, and showing (free trivia bit) that it’s the solar system’s most reflective body (returning 99% of the visible light that strikes it):
Finally here’s a poem that celebrates something, potato chips I think:
A jump in the dark
It’s coming after me
Hope and hurt drown my brain
As I see the cat.
Can’t you hear it
The doubt in your soul
As myriad life goes by
But seems like none of that.
I had a post on the girl who was strip searched because it was believed that she had a prescription strength ibuprofen tablet. The case made its way to the Supreme Court who ruled today that the search was illegal but the school officials were not liable for the ensuing lawsuit (they did not rule whether the school district was).
The events immediately prior to the search in question began in 13-year-old Savana Redding’s math class at Safford Middle School one October day in 2003. The assistant principal of the school, Kerry Wilson, came into the room and asked Savana to go to his office. There, he showed her a day planner, unzipped and open flat on his desk, in which there were several knives, lighters, a permanent marker, and a cigarette. Wilson asked Savana whether the planner was hers; she said it was, but that a few days before she had lent it to her friend, Marissa Glines. Savana stated that none of the items in the planner belonged to her.
Wilson then showed Savana four white prescription strength ibuprofen 400-mg pills, and one over-the-counter blue naproxen 200-mg pill, all used for pain and inflammation but banned under school rules without advance permission. He asked Savana if she knew anything about the pills. Savana answered that she did not. Wilson then told Savana that he had received a report that she was giving these pills to fellow students; Savana denied it and agreed to let Wilson search her belongings. Helen Romero, an administrative assistant, came into the office, and together with Wilson they searched Savana’s backpack, finding nothing.
At that point, Wilson instructed Romero to take Savana to the school nurse’s office to search her clothes for pills. Romero and the nurse, Peggy Schwallier, asked Savana to remove her jacket, socks, and shoes, leaving her in stretchpants and a T-shirt (both without pockets), which she was then asked to remove. Finally, Savana was told to pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, and to pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree. No pills were found.
The Supreme Court found that the search of the backpack was reasonable:
Wilson had sufficient suspicion to justify searching Savana’s backpack and outer clothing. A week earlier, a student, Jordan, had told the principal and Wilson that students were bringing drugs and weapons to school and that he had gotten sick from some pills. On the day of the search, Jordan gave Wilson a pill that he said came from Marissa. Learning that the pill was prescription strength, Wilson called Marissa out of class and was handed the day planner.
Once in his office, Wilson, with Romero present, had Marissa turn out her pockets and open her wallet, producing, inter alia, an over the-counter pill that Marissa claimed was Savana’s. She also denied knowing about the day planner’s contents. Wilson did not ask her when she received the pills from Savana or where Savana might be hiding them. After a search of Marissa’s underwear by Romero and Schwallier revealed no additional pills, Wilson called Savana into his office. He showed her the day planner and confirmed her relationship with Marissa. He knew that the girls had been identified as part of an unusually rowdy group at a school dance, during which alcohol and cigarettes were found in the girls’ bathroom. He had other reasons to connect them with this contraband, for Jordan had told the principal that before the dance, he had attended a party at Savana’s house where alcohol was served. Thus, Marissa’s statement that the pills came from Savana was sufficiently plausible to warrant suspicion that Savana was involved in pill distribution. A student who is reasonably suspected of giving out contraband pills is reasonably suspected of carrying them on her person and in her backpack. Looking into Savana’s bag, in her presence and in the relative privacy of Wilson’s office, was not excessively intrusive, any more than Romero’s subsequent search of her outer clothing.
but that the strip search was not reasonable because the pills were not dangerous and there was no reason to believe that Savana had pills with her at the time or that students hid such things in their underwear. They held that previous court rulings were not clear enough to hold the officials liable. I agree with Justice Ginsburg:
Fellow student Marissa Glines, caught with pills in her pocket, accused Redding of supplying them. App. 13a. Asked where the blue pill among several white pills in Glines’s pocket came from, Glines answered: “I guess it slipped in when she gave me the IBU 400s.” Ibid. Asked next “who is she?”, Glines responded: “Savana Redding.” Ibid. As the Court observes, ante, at 6, 10, no followup questions were asked. Wilson did not test Glines’s accusation for veracity by asking Glines when did Redding give her the pills, where, for what purpose. Any reasonable search for the pills would have ended when inspection of Redding’s backpack and jacket pockets yielded nothing. Wilson had no cause to suspect, based on prior experience at the school or clues in this case, that Redding had hidden pills—containing the equivalent of two Advils or one Aleve—in her underwear or body. To make matters worse, Wilson did not release Redding, to return to class or to go home, after the search. Instead, he made her sit on a chair outside his office for over two hours. At no point did he attempt to call her parent. Abuse of authority of that order should not be shielded by official immunity.
In contrast to T. L. O., where a teacher discovered a student smoking in the lavatory, and where the search was confined to the student’s purse, the search of Redding involved her body and rested on the bare accusation ofanother student whose reliability the Assistant Principal had no reason to trust. The Court’s opinion in T. L. O. plainly stated the controlling Fourth Amendment law: A search ordered by a school official, even if “justified at its inception,” crosses the constitutional boundary if it becomes “excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.” 469 U. S., at 342 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Here, “the nature of the [supposed] infraction,” the slim basis for suspecting Savana Redding, and her “age and sex,” ibid., establish beyond doubt that Assistant Principal Wilson’s order cannot be reconciled with this Court’s opinion in T. L. O. Wilson’s treatment of Redding was abusive and it was not reasonable for him to believe that the law permitted it. I join JUSTICE STEVENS in dissenting from the Court’s acceptance of Wilson’s qualified immunity plea, and would affirm the Court of Appeals’ judgment in all respects.
The only Justice to dissent from the main part of the ruling that the strip search was illegal was Justice Thomas (no surprise) who basically says that officials should never use judgement (Thomas certainly doesn’t seem to know about it, so I suppose I shouldn’t just dismiss the argument). He also believes that school officials should be able to do almost anything they want to keep order (if parents have problems with the actions they can always vote them out or move or send their children to private schools). Basically, he’s from the ‘because I say so’ form of parenting/schooling.
I noticed I haven’t looked at Venus yet, so today I will. The first picture was taken by the Magellan probe using cloud penetrating radar (Credit: SSV, MIPL, Magellan Team, NASA):
A second picture showing the clouds of Venus (Credit: NASA):
and a picture with all the planets of the Solar System showing their relative size (Credit: Lunar and Planetary Laboratory):
Of course it’s Friday, so I throw in for free a poem:
Some days it’s better left unsaid
Who you are and what you did
You’ll never make it til tomorrow
With a metal bar aside your head.
I mostly defended my PhD dissertation yesterday, so I should now have a bit more time to post (I have to finish writing the dissertation and give a final next Tuesday, so I still don’t have much time).
And the big story is in Iran, where it seems obvious that the election was rigged and it’s looking more likely that a serious conflict is coming. I can see why Khamenei likes Ahmadinejad, he has a similar willful ignorance:
He said that the margin of victory — 11 million votes — accorded to Mr. Ahmadinejad in the official tally was so big that it could not have been falsified.
“How can 11 million votes be replaced or changed?” he said. “The Islamic Republic would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people.”
Well, I guess all those elections in the Soviet Union and in all the other dictatorships must have been fine. Really, how could they rig that many votes?
Given the history of the United State’s involvement and that the Iranian government is already trying to claim that demonstrator’s are controlled by foreigners:
News agencies reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.
“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution,” Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency.
it’s appropriate that President Obama has been cautious in his statements about the situation.
Of course, idiots like Wolfowitz and Krauthammer don’t understand this. They say things like:
President Obama’s first response to the protests in Iran was silence, followed by a cautious, almost neutral stance designed to avoid “meddling” in Iranian affairs. I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s initially neutral response to the crisis following the Philippine election of 1986, and of George H.W. Bush’s initially neutral response to the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Both Reagan and Bush were able to abandon their mistaken neutrality in time to make a difference. It’s not too late for Obama to do the same.
…
No two situations are identical. But the reform the Iranian demonstrators seek is something that we should be supporting. In such a situation, the United States does not have a “no comment” option. Coming from America, silence is itself a comment — a comment in support of those holding power and against those protesting the status quo.
Well, at least he admits the situations aren’t the same. A better description is they’re almost the exact opposite–the US backed and supported Marcos and had a large presence in the Phillipines giving us a lot of influence, while in Iran the US has no presence, and because of our history of supporting the Shah, negative influence (it would probably actually hurt either candidate if Obama supports them).
This statement really gets to what they’re both about:
This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.
The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism — leave it forever spent and discredited.
In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 — the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, the first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt — was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.
Actually, I shouldn’t call them idiots, this will help their agenda. Remember that these are the people who pushed for the invasion of Iraq and then tried to get the US to invade Iran. They still want the US to invade Iran. They want Obama to back the demonstrators publicly because that will make a big crackdown more likely and that will put a lot of pressure on Obama to intervene.
As an aside, I find it amazing that the Washington Post has these two columns on the same day (there is a more moderate one by Ignatius) at all and the fact that they did so the day after they firedFroomkin really says something pretty bad about it (you’ll still be able to find Froomkin here). Go look at this post to see how good he is:
The Obama Justice Department yesterday put forth an new legal argument, one that even the Bush team might not have had the gall to employ. Call it the Daily Show disclosure exclusion.
Yes, a Justice Department lawyer actually argued to a federal district court judge that there should be an exemption from Freedom of Information Act disclosure rules for documents that would subject senior administration officials to embarrassment — as in on late-night television.
Today I look at Jupiter. The first picture is in pastely colors because it was taken in near-infared light. The two colored dots are the moons Io and Ganymede, while the three dark dots are their shadows (Callisto is not seen in the picture, but its shadow is–Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)):
The second is a picture in ultra-violet of Jupiter after it was hit by fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy (that’s what the arrow are pointing to–Credit: Hubble Space Telescope Comet Team):
And finally a picture of Jupiter in true colors taken by the Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)):
Oh, yeah and here’s a poem:
I saw a tree
And looked again
It was more
Than nevermore.
I’m trying to finish up my dissertation (supposedly I’m defending on June 18), so no pictures or random songs or 980 page story on the meaning of an encounter between Joe and Jane that almost caused the ant apocalypse.
Just a poem:
Pencil me in for Thursday
The time is right for fireworks
In never ascending order
Towards the rink of disaster
Skating towards oblivion
With matches in both eyes.
On a panel on Morning Joe on MSNBC, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked whether anyone on the panel could name a successful company that had a union (this was in the midst of union bashing). He sent an ‘apology‘ to TPM:
“Boy did I touch the third rail! My off-handed comment was admittedly flip. I apologize for that. It was meant to provoke a conversation.”
I did not mean to suggest that there are literally no successful companies that employ union workers. Of course there are! Your readers have provided a good list (though I might quibble with some of the names.)
Go watch the video and you can see that the other people in the panel certainly took it literally (I guess he could mean that he meant to spark a conversation of union bashing). I also never knew that union bashing was the ‘third rail’ since you hear it anytime a company with unions go under (really, have you ever heard a discussion on TV about GM’s problems without the unions being blamed).
But maybe he’s tough on both sides. Let’s see what he had to say about the AIG bonuses:
As much as we might want to void those A.I.G. pay contracts, Pearl Meyer, a compensation consultant at Steven Hall & Partners, says it would put American business on a worse slippery slope than it already is. Business agreements of other companies that have taken taxpayer money might fall into question. Even companies that have not turned to Washington might seize the opportunity to break inconvenient contracts.
If government officials were to break the contracts, they would be “breaking a bond,” Ms. Meyer says. “They are raising a whole new question about the trust and commitment organizations have to their employees.” (The auto industry unions are facing a similar issue — but the big difference is that there is a negotiation; no one is unilaterally tearing up contracts.)
Ah, I see he is even-handed. Well, unless you know that GM was only going to be bailed out if the unions took the cuts and that the AIG contracts would be worthless if the US had let AIG go bankrupt (he does mention this in the column). So he’s ok with forcing GM union workers to change their contract. Maybe he’d also be ok with forcing the AIG workers to change their contracts.
Now we can debate why A.I.G. felt it necessary to guarantee seven executives at least $3 million apiece when the economy was clearly on shaky ground. Perhaps we will find out these contracts were a bit of sleight of hand to enrich executives who knew this financial Titanic had hit the iceberg. But another possible explanation is that A.I.G. knew it needed to keep its people.
That is the explanation offered by Edward M. Liddy, who was installed as A.I.G.’s chief executive when the government effectively nationalized the company last fall. (He is being paid $1 a year.)
“We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff” the company “if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” he said.
There’s some truth to what Mr. Liddy is saying. Would you want to work at A.I.G.? Sure, maybe for $3 million. But not if you could go somewhere else for even more — or even much less.
So, when high-wage workers cause a company to fail (spectacularly), and nearly bring the world economy down, he thinks the same workers not only should be retained but need to be paid millions. He’s just another person that believes the rich deserve all the money they make and the rest of us are overpaid.
In a related piece of news (on the NY Time’s Dealbook edited by Sorkin), we get to see this class warfare in action:
Carl C. Icahn, the corporate raider turned activist investor, claimed a major victory in his long-running battle with Biogen Idec on Wednesday, announcing that two allies had been placed on the board of the biotechnology company….
Mr. Icahn, whose hedge funds own about 5.6 percent of Biogen, is now likely to push the board to split the company in two. One business would focus on neurology, and the other would focus on cancer. He could also try to find a buyer for Biogen.
Mr. Icahn wants Biogen, the world’s biggest maker of multiple sclerosis drugs, to reduce costs and improve relationships with its partners. He has been critical of the company’s chief executive, James C. Mullen, but it is unclear whether Mr. Icahn will seek to replace him.
Hmm, ‘reduce costs’ I wonder that means for the workers?
“I think he’s going to have to work harder,” Mr. Icahn told The Times of Mr. Mullen, noting that Mr. Mullen has received $62 million in compensation over the last five years, while Biogen’s stock price has declined by 24 percent.
“That’s a pretty good job if you can get it,” Mr. Icahn told The Boston Herald, adding that the company had been used like a “piggy bank” and run with “a country club attitude.”
Mullen is overpaid said the billionaire. This is what the world has come to in the US: everything is about shareholders. The reason people like Sorkin hate unions is because it increases the costs of a company and thus reduces share price. They don’t care about the workers and they don’t care about the long term health of the company. All they care about is their money.
The New Hampshire legislature first passed a gay marriage bill back on April 30, but then there were a few bumps. Anyway, a gay marriage bill has now been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.
I will again link to the Union Leader, because they again have links to the text of the bills (they also have the roll call vote). The most recent addition is here and here are the religious additions:
III. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a religious organization, association, or society, or any individual who is managed, directed, or supervised by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised, or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society, shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges to an individual if such request for such services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges is related to the solemnization of a marriage, the celebration of a marriage, or the promotion of marriage through religious counseling, programs, courses, retreats, or housing designated for married individuals, and such solemnization, celebration, or promotion of marriage is in violation of his or her religious beliefs and faith. Any refusal to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges in accordance with this section shall not create any civil claim or cause of action or result in any state action to penalize or withhold benefits from such religious organization, association, or society, or any individual who is managed, directed, or supervised by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised, or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society.
IV. The marriage laws of this state shall not be construed to affect the ability of a fraternal benefit society to determine the admission of members pursuant to RSA 418:5, and shall not require a fraternal benefit society that has been established and is operating for charitable or educational purposes and which is operated, supervised, or controlled by or in connection with a religious organization to provide insurance benefits to any person if to do so would violate the fraternal benefit society’s free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and part I, article 5 of the New Hampshire constitution.
V. Nothing in this chapter shall be deemed or construed to limit the protections and exemptions provided to religious organizations under RSA 354-A:18.
Looking through this quickly, I don’t have any major objections to the language although it does seem a bit sweeping. I again wonder why religion gets special benefits in this country (religious groups always claim that gays want extra rights–maybe the reason they believe this is that they have more rights than non-religious groups).
The bill goes into effect next January 1. Congratulations to NH.
I’m a day late to this but I offer my condolences to the family of Dr. Tiller, one of the very few late term abortion doctors. He was murdered on Sunday during a church service.
I actually would find the fixation on late term abortion providers by ‘pro-life’ activists a bit weird if I didn’t know that it’s all propaganda. The reason that it should be weird is that late term abortions are strongly regulated and they need to be documented to show they abide by the regulations. If not, they can be charged ( Dr. Tiller was brought into court at least a few times–the charges were dropped each time). Pretty much the only time abortions are allowed is if the woman’s physicalor mental health are severely compromised (or the fetus has a major problem). This is exactly the conditions where most people are ok with abortion. The groups focus on late term abortions because then they can show a near full term fetus and falsely say that most of these are for convenience.
Most anti-abortion groups have come out with a statement condemning the shooting, although some are sticking to their guns:
Mr. Roeder also encountered Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines whose publication, Prayer and Action News, had received articles from Mr. Roeder. Mr. Leach said Mr. Roeder had presented strong anti-government views (he believed the government tracked money, Mr. Leach recalled, and offered his own method to “remove the magnetic strip from a five-dollar bill”) and views similar to Mr. Leach’s own on abortion. “To call this a crime is too simplistic,” Mr. Leach said of Dr. Tiller’s death.
Continued from this morning: I think more will go down the road of Megan McCardle (via Amanda Marcotte here and also see her tribute to Dr. Tiller here–in fact all the posts between these two are about him):
We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders–had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer’s actions. In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions. Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court. If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action? To shrug? Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes? Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn’t seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right? We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it.
As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect. The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one. Tiller’s killer is a murderer, and whether or not he deserves the lengthy jail sentence he will get, society needs him in jail for its own protection.
and she claims to be pro-choice. The idea is that the murder was wrong but it was understandable. I wonder if she’ll have a similar post if the murderer of the soldier yesterday (my condolences to his family also) turns out to be one who believes the US acts as an imperialist country that is responsible for millions of deaths around the world. Or if she had a similar post about al-Qaeda because they believe western nations are destroying the morals of millions of Muslims around the world. I have a feeling she won’t have posts like that, because those people are crazy and terrorists.
And some of these groups are terrorists. They may not like Randall Terry saying this now:
Remarks by Randall Terry – founder of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue, which stages protests to stop women from getting abortions – have further aggravated the efforts of activists like Schenck and Mahoney. Terry, while agreeing after questioning by reporters yesterday that Tiller’s killing was wrong, also chastised his compatriots for “flinching” in their rhetoric and tactics, and suggested Tiller was partly responsible for his own fate.
“George Tiller was a mass murderer, and horrifically, he reaped what he sowed,” Terry said. But “we must not flinch, we must not retreat a single inch” in fighting abortion and the appointment of abortion rights jurists, Terry said.
but it’s the same rhetoric that ‘pro-life’ people have been using for years. And the whole point of a group like Operation Rescue is to intimidatepeople who either want an abortion or perform them.
This man was probably a lone crazy who could just as easily have murdered a sheriff or IRS agent, because he refused to pay taxes, so the whole movement shouldn’t be judged by him. Still, it might be a good idea to take Megan McCardle’s sympathy as a warning instead of a plea for sympathy: if these terrorists believe that they have no chance of changing things peacefully then a few very well might turn to violence.
6/5/09 Update: Via Kevin Drum, here’s another post on the matter that links to two places with information: a Guttmacher release and Fox News (which uses information from Planned Parenthood). The Fox news list says there were about 100 third trimester abortions (this is the 24th week or past) a year (the post is from 2003) or less than .01% of all abortions, while the Guttmacher report puts the percent at .08% or 1000 a year (at least for 2005 when there were about 1.2 million abortions in total). We are talking about a pretty small number here and ALL have to have documented reasons that show the woman’s health or life is in danger or there is a problem with the fetus or the woman was raped.
Hmm, Scary Go Round has a story on Atlantis (it starts here) so I think this week I’ll look at Neptune. Both of the following pictures were taken by Voyager 2 (that’s V’ger to you Star Trek people) back in 1989 or so and the credit is NASA/JPL. The first is of the planet itself (it’s blue!):
and here is Triton, one of Neptune’s 11 moons (not blue):
and finally here’s a poem (also not blue):
Ah too much
Too much too much
You intrude
You prevail upon
You partake
Of me too much
I will not
Bury you into me.
