Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

In Which The Dalai Lama

22 Comments

…declares himself an economic and ethical ignoramus:

“Still I am a Marxist,” the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader said in New York, where he arrived with an entourage of robed monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures.

Marxism has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits,” the Dalai Lama, 74, said.

Well, he can afford to be. The rest of us? Not so much.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

More Foreign Policy Insanity

27 Comments

So much for the “special relationship“:

There seems to be no reason for the Obama administration to back a demand for negotiations over the Falklands, unless it’s just to curry favor with anti-American regimes by tossing our allies under the bus as appeasement. It’s an absurd stance and an insult to the British, as well as to the actual people on the islands themselves.

There must be some reason, but I doubt if it’s a good one.

Political Commentary

A Recovery Not Remarkable Enough

11 Comments

Apparently, Congresswoman Giffords is still a long way from being able to meet her obligations to her consitituents:

Asked for a blunt description of Giffords’ condition, her chief of staff, Pia Carusone, replied: “She’s living. She’s alive. But if she were to plateau today, and this was as far as she gets, it would not be nearly the quality of life she had before.”

As to whether she resembles herself before the shooting, Carusone said, “There’s no comparison. All that we can hope for is that she won’t plateau today and that she’ll keep going, and that when she does plateau, it will be at a place far away from here.”

The news may be sobering, but it’s not necessarily a surprise. The state of Giffords’ health has been closely guarded information as early, hopeful accounts of her rapid physical and motor recovery yielded to more cautious — and less frequent — reports. She remains at a Houston rehabilitation facility while her staff manages her day-to-day congressional business.

Well, her staff can’t vote for her. Her constituents are essentially unrepresented in Congress. If I were one, I’d be demanding her resignation so they can have a special election, and if it didn’t happen, I’d try to recall her. But her staff doesn’t seem to think there’s a problem:

As far as her political career goes, the only deadline her staff is keeping in mind is May 2012, when she would have to file for reelection if that is her plan.

So they plan to have this go on for at least another year, and perhaps the rest of her term. It’s a tragedy, but if she can’t perform the job, she needs to be replaced with someone who can.

[Update a few minutes later]

It looks as though there is an Arizona law that could take care of the situation, but the Republicans seem reluctant to use it.

Political Commentary

The Police State

10 Comments

…of Illinois:

Over the last few years, surveillance video has also exposed a number of police abuses in Chicago, including one episode in which an off-duty cop savagely beat a female bartender who had refused to continue serving him. He was sentenced to probation.

In 2008, the city made national headlines with another major scandal in which officers in the department’s Special Operations Unit — alleged to be made up of the most elite and trusted cops in Chicago — were convicted of a variety of crimes, including physical abuse and intimidation, home robberies, theft and planning a murder.

In a study published the same year, University of Chicago Law Professor Craig B. Futterman found 10,000 complaints filed against Chicago police officers between 2002 and 2004, more than any city in the country. When adjusted for population, that’s still about 40 percent above the national average. Even more troubling, of those 10,000 complaints, just 19 resulted in any significant disciplinary action. In 85 percent of complaints, the police department cleared the accused officer without even bothering to interview him.

Yet Alvarez feels it necessary to devote time and resources to prosecuting Chicagoans who, given the figures and anecdotes above, feel compelled to hit the record button when confronted by a city cop.

This is outrageous.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

We Need More Bureaucrats

6 Comments

…like Orson Swindle:

Mr. Swindle is keen to point out that he did not “eventually come around to the view” that the EDA is a mess and a waste — he went in knowing that. A true-believing Reaganite, his desire was to kill the EDA, or, failing that, to get it on a very short leash.

“It was a controversial agency at that point in time,” he says. “We knew what we were doing: We had to cut off the flow of money. And EDA was one of the worst examples I’d seen in my life, just one massive divvying out of money with nothing to show for it.”

Unable to simply shut the agency down, Mr. Swindle began engaging in some Reaganite hijinx: He began by submitting budget requests of $0.00. When Congress appropriated the money, anyway, Mr. Swindle made it harder to spend, capping grants at around $600,000 instead of the previous multi-million-dollar awards. The bureaucrats did not appreciate that: Ten $600,000 grants instead of one $6 million grant meant ten times the work.

And when all else failed, he turned to shaming the grant recipients. It is customary for government grant-making agencies to write boilerplate congratulatory letters to their clients, along with those oversized checks designed for photo ops. When a particularly egregious grant was proposed, Mr. Swindle would fight it. If eventually forced by Congress to make it, anyway, he’d have some fun with that letter. “Instead of writing, ‘Dear Mr. Mayor, it is my pleasure to award you a $400,000 grant for . . . whatever,’ I’d write, ‘As you know, you have been awarded $400,000 for a project that does not meet the standards or guidelines of EDA. Since you’re getting it, some other, more deserving city isn’t.’”

Maybe the next president can get him back.