Monthly Archives: March 2010

Monday Evening’s Read

As I mentioned yesterday, the Obama Administration was sending over its blueprint for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. (pdf)

The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg on the future of nuclear energy in the United States, Some Nukes.

Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria on President Obama’s successful strategy in Pakistan, A Victory for Obama.

Glenn Beck vs. Fox

I’ve always thought that Glenn Beck would flame out sooner rather than later. You can’t make your living as a prophet of doom & gloom if the doom & gloom doesn’t come to pass. However, the end for Glenn Beck may be more related to money than from burn-out, according to Howard Kurtz:

With his celebrity fueled by a Time cover story, best-selling books, cheerleading role at protest rallies and steady stream of divisive remarks, Beck is drawing big ratings. But there is a deep split within Fox between those — led by Chairman Roger Ailes — who are supportive, and many journalists who are worried about the prospect that Beck is becoming the face of the network.

By calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a “cancer,” Beck has achieved a lightning-rod status that is unusual even for the network owned by Rupert Murdoch. And that, in turn, has complicated the channel’s efforts to neutralize White House criticism that Fox is not really a news organization. Beck has become a constant topic of conversation among Fox journalists, some of whom say they believe he uses distorted or inflammatory rhetoric that undermines their credibility.

Fox still thinks of itself as a news organization although they lost that distinction a long time ago in my book. Obviously some people at Fox still think they are journalists. The organized boycott of Glenn Beck’s sponsors have also taken a toll:

More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of Beck’s program, making it difficult for Fox to sell ads. The time has instead been sold to smaller firms offering such products as Kaopectate, Carbonite, 1-800-PetMeds and Goldline International. A handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether. Network executives say they believe they could charge higher rates if the host were more widely acceptable to advertisers.

Basically Beck is self-promoting and it’s starting to rub people the wrong way. The loss of advertisers is also hurting Fox’s bottom line. I’m sure you’ll also be shocked to learn that Glenn Beck practices his tearing up moments.

Monday Open Thread

Beware the Ides of March! Today is the Ides of March and also the Breitbartocalypse. At this time tomorrow the “institutional left” will have ceased to exist. I suppose you’ll only see a blank page here tomorrow. We will all have been raptured or something. It’s pretty unclear what Breitbart meant. Stay tuned! Let’s open up this thread and get rolling.

Paul Krugman has an interesting op-ed today on tensions between the U.S. and China over currency policy. He turns conventional wisdom on its head by showing China is the one with no power right now:

If Treasury does find Chinese currency manipulation, then what? Here, we have to get past a common misunderstanding: the view that the Chinese have us over a barrel, because we don’t dare provoke China into dumping its dollar assets.

What you have to ask is, What would happen if China tried to sell a large share of its U.S. assets? Would interest rates soar? Short-term U.S. interest rates wouldn’t change: they’re being kept near zero by the Fed, which won’t raise rates until the unemployment rate comes down. Long-term rates might rise slightly, but they’re mainly determined by market expectations of future short-term rates. Also, the Fed could offset any interest-rate impact of a Chinese pullback by expanding its own purchases of long-term bonds.

It’s true that if China dumped its U.S. assets the value of the dollar would fall against other major currencies, such as the euro. But that would be a good thing for the United States, since it would make our goods more competitive and reduce our trade deficit. On the other hand, it would be a bad thing for China, which would suffer large losses on its dollar holdings. In short, right now America has China over a barrel, not the other way around.

Good news for Harry Reid – his wife has been released from the hospital.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s wife was discharged from a Washington-area hospital Sunday after being treated for a broken neck and back when a tractor-trailer rear-ended her minivan.

Landra Reid, 69, was hospitalized last week after she and the couple’s 49-year-old daughter, Lana, were hit by a semi-truck while traveling in their Honda Odyssey in stop-and-go traffic on Interstate 95 about 14 miles south of Washington.

The Nevada senator’s wife of 50 years, who suffered a broken nose, broken back and a broken neck, underwent neck surgery Friday at Inova Fairfax Hospital.

Best wishes to Landra Reid for a speedy recovery.

Happy 25th, Dot Com

They grow up so fast, don’t they? To some of us, at least, it seems like only yesterday that this whole “internets” thing got started. I remember how excited I got when I first started seeing web addresses referenced in tv commercials back in the mid to late ’90s. Little did I know, really until today, how far back the commercial internet reached. For, as CNN reports :

It was 25 years ago — March 15, 1985 — that the first dot-com domain name — Symbolics.com — appeared on the Internet, ushering in the commercial age of the World Wide Web.

Having a domain name made it simpler for the average person to access a Web site. Instead of having to remember a long series of numbers and dots, you could type in ATT.com, IBM.com or CNN.com.

Of course, there weren’t a whole lot of people hooked up to the internet in 1985, and it wasn’t until 1991 that Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web was introduced to the world. As the article goes on to say, it took over two years for the first 100 .com sites to get up and running. As late as 1995, there were only about 18,000. Today — more than 80 million.

I think that 200 years from now, when people look back on all the inventions, innovations, and technology that came out of the 20th Century, the internet will be right there near the top. Very few other innovations have had the kind of fundamental effect on everyday life that the internet has. So, as a guy with a very historically-oriented mind, I want to be sure to mark this date, and wish the commercial internet a happy 25th birthday.

Anyone have any memories of when you first became aware of the internet?

States Delaying Refunds

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but states have had a particularly tough time during the recent economic downturn. Since almost all are prohibited by their own laws from running deficits, they’ve looked everywhere they can to grab as many extra dollars as they can. The latest idea (and I found out about this, of all places, from the Flyers’ broadcasters during the game Saturday) is that some states are delaying sending out tax refund checks. As the CBS article states:

Some states suffering severe, recession-induced budget problems are holding off on paying tax refunds to people and businesses.

North Carolina, Hawaii and Alabama are already doing it and others, such as New York and Kansas, might.

The states are holding or may hold onto your money as long as they can because they need to use it for other purposes, tax expert and attorney Barbara Weltman told “Early Show” Saturday Edition” co-anchor Chris Wragge.

You’ll eventually get your refund, but when depends on where you live, she explained. Laws differ from state-to-state, but most states have to issue a check (or direct deposit) within 45 days from April 15 or the date the return was filed, whichever is later. So, if you filed your return in February, the refund isn’t due until 45 days after April 15. Some states have even longer — up to 90 days — to issue the refunds without having to pay interest.

As best as I could tell, if this is still accurate, Delaware has 90 days from the filing of the return in which to issue a refund without interest. I have no idea what the interest would be, or if this is still the correct regulation. If anyone knows, I’d love to find out. I tried to wade through some of the tax code online, but I couldn’t find anything else that dealt with deadlines for refunds.

 I haven’t seen or heard of anyone having issues getting their refunds on time, but it doesn’t surprise me that states would do this. On a related note it’s always struck me funny how so many people think of their tax refund as “found money”. So few seem to realize that they’re not “Getting money from the government”, they’re getting their money back from the government. Refund money is really nothing more than a zero-interest loan you make to the government. If they can hang on to it for a few extra weeks, I’m not surprised they’re doing it. I’ve always wondered what would happen if one year, everyone had their withholding calculated out right so that they paid the correct amount throughout the year, i.e., no refunds. Anyone think the idea of states holding back peoples’ refunds sounds a bit cheesy or cheap?

Health Care Reform: The Endgame

Robert Gibbs was on the Sunday shows yesterday and said that by next week health care reform will be the law of the land:

“We’ll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week,” Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Gibbs added that those on next week’s Sunday talk shows “will be talking about healthcare not as a presidential proposal but I think as the law of the land.”

Nancy Pelosi has given notice to members of the U.S. House that the plan is to have the vote by Friday or Saturday of this week. The House starts the mark-up on the reconciliation bill today.

One thing that has been lost in all the process talk in the Senate is that once the Senate bill passes the House, it’s game over for the Republicans. Once the bill passes we have health care reform and the only remaining question is whether we will also have the reconciliation fixes to the bill as well. All the public discussion about procedure was one big psy-ops operations aimed at scaring wavering House Democrats. TPM explains:

All week, Republicans have been dropping “friendly” words of warning to House Democrats. At their weekly press availability Tuesday, Republican Senate leaders gave it the hard sell.

“[W]e believe that what the president is doing is asking House Democrats to hold hands, jump off a cliff, and hope Harry Reid catches them,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). “And Senator Reid’s not going to have any incentive to catch them because by the time the reconciliation bill gets to the Senate, the president will have already signed the health-care bill into law, and he’ll be well on his way to Indonesia.”

Gee, thanks for your concern Lamar. I’m sure you only have the Democratic party’s best interests in mind.

By the end of the week, Republicans were more or less candid about the strategy. Gregg basically admitted to the divide and conquer strategy to Huffington Post. “Absolutely,” Gregg said. “We are trying to open the eyes of our colleagues on the Democratic side who are being solicited with goodies that the boat into which all these goodies are being put may not ever come to dock.”

The party has united behind the bill. 83% of MoveOn members support its passage and organized labor has threatened to primary Democrats who vote against reform. At the same time, the opposition to the bill is weakening and is less organized. The Democratic party’s fortunes in 2010 and beyond are tied up in this bill and I think most Democrats know this.

No Quarter

This post is an odd one to write because all it is is a rather long answer to one trivia question: Who wrote the bill which created the most successful commemorative coin series in the history of the United States? This post has nothing to do with my dislike of Mike Castle as he has only proved himself to be an eager lapdog of the Republican Party leadership over the last decade. This is trivia only.

One of Castle’s jewels in his limited legislative crown has been the State Quarters series which  earned the U.S. Treasury some $4.6 billion. Back in 2003, the Director of the U.S. Mint said, “Congressman Castle was the catalyst, authoring the legislation that launched this remarkable program, the most popular in United States Mint history.” Funny thing about Mike Castle and the Quarter . . .  but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Back in mid-90s the Citizens Commemorative Coin Advisory Committee was in serious trouble. There were several commemorative coins that actual lost money. Who can remember the World Cup Tournament Dollar or the U.S. Capitol Bicentennial Dollar?  When the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy met in July 1995 things were bleak for the U.S. commemorative coin program, very bleak..  Chairman of the subcommittee Mike Castle said:

We are here today to review the entire commemorative program. It may be that radical measures must be taken to preserve the taxpayer from risk in a program that is heading out of control.

If that is determined to be the case, this Congress will need to take the action necessary to rectify this situation. Above all, we were elected to preserve the taxpayers’ interest.

But all of that changed with the testimony of numismatist Harvey Stack:

. . . we could do the first 13 States and issue new commemorative coins every year or two that would commemorate the other States as they came into the Union, and then cover at least the first 50 States. It would be historical.

Mike Castle’s response:

I might say it is a brilliant idea, Mr. Stack. Delaware was the first State.

In one breath Castle recognized a great idea, and then said something true, but truly stupid. And just to piss off Glenn Beck, it should be noted that Stack’s idea originated with a Canadian commemorative coin series. Two years later in September 1997, Mike Castle introduced HR 2414 50 States Commemorative Coin Program Act. The act passed the House but never made it to the floor of the Senate. So, here is the question again, but this time with the answer.

Q: Who wrote the bill which created the most successful commemorative coin series in the history of the United States?

A: Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island

Why did Chafee’s legislation win out over Castle’s? Given the dismal history of the U.S. commemorative coins, Chafee’s legislation gave the Secretary of the Treasury an escape clause, an opportunity to terminate the program if it wasn’t making any money. Castle’s did not.

The Secretary shall take such actions as may be necessary to ensure that minting and issuing coins under this section will not result in any net cost to the United States Government.

Considering that cost was Castle’s major concern back in 1995, it is odd that he did not include this in his legislation. However we’ll save that question for another time because  as I said at the beginning of this post that all I was doing was asking and answering a simple trivia question.

Late Night Video: Mr. Trololo

The Mr. Trololo video is sweeping the inter tubes and should be watched if you haven’t already seen it. According to Pravda, yes that newspaper, this is a video of the Soviet era performer Eduard Khil singing “I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home” . Khil, interviewed in the Christian Science Monitor, said:

On the phone, he explained that the reason the iconic song has no lyrics is that the original ones, about a cowboy riding the range while his wife sits at home knitting socks, were banned as “too naughty” by Soviet censors of the day.

“A theme like that was unacceptable, so we decided to sing it without any words at all,” he said. “So, in this case, I was an instrument rather than a singer.”

The Geekanator and the Governator

I will let you decide which is which…..

Pic is courtesy of Governor Markell’s Twitter stream. I believe they were all laughing because Governor Markell said to Governor Schwarzenegger at the start of their meeting: “I apologize for all the cameras, they follow me everywhere.”

Impeach Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas was in the court majority in the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which overturned a century’s worth of regulations barring unlimited spending by corporations in political campaigns. Virginia Thomas, Clarence Thomas’s wife, is preparing to take advantage of this SCOTUS ruling to start her own Tea Party group, which will take corporate donations to spend on support of political candidates.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative “core principles,” she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources — including corporations — as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

…

Justice Thomas, 61, recently expressed sensitivity to such concerns, telling law students in Florida that he doesn’t attend the State of the Union because it is “so partisan.” Thomas, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, has been a reliable conservative vote since he joined the court in 1991.

Experts say Virginia Thomas’ work doesn’t violate ethical rules for judges. But Liberty Central could give rise to conflicts of interest for her husband, they said, as it tests the norms for judicial spouses. The couple have been married since 1987.

Gee, I’m glad he’s “sensitive.” If he really cared, he’d give up his Supreme Court seat or ask his wife to stay on the sidelines. I think we’ll need to watch this group very, very closely – I’d certainly like to know who’s funneling money to the wife of a Supreme Court justice. Will Thomas recuse himself from decisions affecting these clients and these groups associated with her politics?