The Unbearbable Dishonesty of Being the News Journal

The News Journal Editorial Board has decided to weigh in again on the Recovery Package — against FTR — and to do so in a way that serves not only as a symbol of the real lack of basic economic knowledge of folks in the media, but also is an example (one of many) of how awful this paper continues to get. To wit:

  • They complain that the package does not follow economists’ guidance of being “quick, temporary and targeted.” The OMB, of course, tells us that 65%+ of the House Bill will be spent in 2 years (the stated goal) and 75%+ of the Senate Bill will be spent in the next 2 years. If you read the bill at all, you’ll note that the multiple hundred pages of these bills is a targeted list of spending priorities and none of them comes with a perpetual spending provision. Additional money to the Recovery program pools would need to be authorized by Congress in subsequent budget years.
  • Their only stated measure of the quality of the bills is the total price tag — so that the Senate Bill ends up being better than the House Bill because it is cheaper. If you are going to invoke economists’ guidance for the shape of the bill, you’d think that they’d do that to assess the quality and effectiveness of the bill.

    • (more after the jump.)

BWW’s Owners are Liquidating

Article from today's NJ. TommyWonk reviews his previous assessment of this situation and what this likely means for the Blue Water Wind project: It’s clear that BNB’s once formidable empire…

$589 a night?

What room did she stay in at Caesars? The Roman Orgy Room? Oh wow. I must apologize for giving you all that mental image of our former beloved Governor. Here…

DelCOG Meeting — The State of FOIA Activity

Charles Davis, Executive Director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition spoke to the DelCOG group on Thursday and delivered a very interesting talk about the state of FOIA activity in the US and the increasing push by governments at all levels in the US to try to build a wall around their actions and deliberations.

The good news, according to Davis, is that interest in government transparency is very high — largely an unintended gift of George W Bush. People for all parties are clear about the need to have the government operate in the open, given the insistence on (and the consequences of) the obsessive secrecy of BushCo. This is a real advantage for Open Government partisans — it is much easier to change the conversation towards greater openness, since now everyone knows exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Interestingly, he noted Texas as being a famous Open Government state and John Cornyn (!) as being a pretty good friend of Open Government as well as Shield Law efforts. The Texas politics that he came up in rewarded politicians who actively supported Open Government issues. Go figure.

The big issues for Open Government (besides the fact that we don’t really have it — yet! — here in Delaware):

Deep FOIA Thought

Sitting in my car at a level crossing waiting for 100 car coal train headed for the Indian River Power Plant to pass by, I heard that Pete Schwartzkopf is…