Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

An Interesting Blogo Discussion

3 Comments

Jim Lindgren has a timeline. Lots of interesting discussion in comments, including this:

What’s missing from most of this analysis is the timing vis-a-vis the context.

The charges of selling the Senate seat, while spectacular, are just a small element of the overall corruption involved here. Going past the headlines, the other charges include some actually more serious corruption, in the usual pay-to-play manner that is so ordinary here in northeastern Illinois that locals hardly raise an eyebrow.

In fact, I am starting to think that Fitzgerald did indeed pull the trigger much earlier than planned or desired. The huge Federal cloud hanging over Blagojevich isn’t new, and it didn’t start on Election Day 2008.

Blagojevich is but one of the Machine’s operatives abroad working for the benefit of the Machine. The fact that he went wrong isn’t even exceptional; recall failed US Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who also was “sent”, in the Chicago Outfit sense, to Washington.

Blagojevich failed as a Machine person and has been an outcast among his peers for a considerable time now. The fact that the Tribune has been very loudly working against him, leading the way for a Constitutional amendment to permit recall, shows how far off the reservation he’s gone.
But the Trib’s opposition, worthy of the description “all-out attack”, is a clue all by itself.

The Tribune is the organization that made it possible for the Machine to install Obama in the Senate and so on, by taking out his opponent back in 2000 with an Axelrod-style oppo campaign.
The tie here is the protection of Obama. Blagojevich was dangerously close to damaging Obama, and taking him out was high on several people’s lists.

This is not to suggest that Fitzgerald would have helped in that regard, but the help he got from within the Machine certainly must have weighed in the decision to go forward with still so much investigating to be done, and so many more Machine people to indict. Arresting Blagojevich so soon must have pained Fitzgerald, but he did it anyway.

A year ago, Chicagoans widely believed that Fitzgerald would be sent packing in January, 2009 if any Democrat won the White House. This does not seem so obvious, now. Still, it is possible to argue that there was exigency in moving against Blagojevich with the possiblity that the Fitzgerald era in Chicago was drawing to a close.

Keep in mind, especially those who don’t follow the Machine so closely, that Fitzgerald has put some seriously heavy Machine people behind bars, and is getting close to even bigger targets. The desperation on the Fifth Floor (at City Hall) is palpable. Even Richard Daley himself has been interviewed.

But Blagojevich was doing far worse things than the charges presented here, and the Feds wanted a lot more than just this one guy and his chief of staff.

There is local speculation that Rezko suddenly decided not to talk to reduce his sentence, an event that coincided with the election of Obama, and that with Rezko going silent on the possiblity of either a pardon or to take one for the President. Some also believe that without the help of Rezko, Fitzgerald found a number of other avenues becoming less inviting and so, went with what he had.

Finally, it’s clear from the tapes that Blagojevich has gotten unstable, saying such things (which are not extraordinary around Chicago in the least) knowing full well the prosecutor’s office was draped all over him like a blanket. I believe Fitzgerald acted early in order to prevent even more eccentric behavior.

I urge anyone looking for background on this to look up columnist John Kass at chicagotribune.com, who not only accurately foresaw the events of yesterday, but many others as well.

You will learn that this is all a large picture of a large organization, and separating the three Daleys, Blagojevich, Obama, and the others just isn’t possible.

The thought that Blagojevich was too corrupt for the Chicago machine beggars the imagination, but anything is possible, I guess. Or perhaps he was just too erratic and unreliable.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

That Which Is Not Seen

6 Comments

Jim Manzi points out an excellent example of my piece on how those claiming to want “change” cling so desperately to the status quo, at the expense of the economy and productivity:

The amount that would ultimately be loaned to the Big 3 is unclear, but most observers believe that when all is said and done, it will be much, much more than the $34 billion that the Big 3 have requested. Let’s assume $100 billion. As a pure thought exercise, how many jobs could we create with an extra $100 billion of venture capital? How much more sustainable would these be than jobs in companies that need to come to Washington to beg for capital?

We’re not supposed to ask those questions. These threats of financial armageddon if we don’t bail out the UAW are just scare tactics. It will be very bad in the short run for some locales (including my home town of Flint, and my family there), but the nation would survive, and if we can break out of this “too big to fail” mentality, much the better for it.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

The NASAverse

21 Comments

Clark Lindsey has some thoughts on two parallel universes, in which one has orders of magnitude higher costs than the other. As he notes, I too hope that the new administration will reside in the one with the low costs, but if it does, it will be fought tooth and nail by legislators to whom jobs are more important than either taxpayers’ money or progress in space.

[Update a while later]

I see that, amusingly, Mark Whittington is foolishly attempting to lecture his intellectual betters on matters that he doesn’t understand:

If the sole purpose of Ares/Orion was just to get people into low Earth orbit, Clark would certainly have a valid point. But the purpose of Ares/Orion is to get people into Low Earth Orbit in a vehicle (Orion) designed to go to the Moon. Dragon doesn’t have to go to the Moon. (Of course, imagining a Dragon that could do that, with the extra radiation shielding, the extra consumables, and so on would be an interesting thought experiment. Could a Falcon 9 Heavy still loft such a vehicle?).

There is vastly insufficient difference between a vehicle that goes to the moon and one that goes to LEO to justify the cost difference between Orion and Dragon. A lunar mission requires a) additional radiation shielding, b) twice the thickness of the entry heat shield and c) extra consumables (two of which he points out). That doesn’t translate into orders of magnitude in cost difference by any sane cost model. As for “lofting” it, it doesn’t need to be lofted in a single flight. Once you break out of the notion that you have to do everything in a single launch, it becomes easy to build both a spacious crew capsule, and a service module with abundant consumables. But Elon’s BFR follow on would even be able to “loft” it in one go, and I’d be willing to bet that he could get there on a billion dollars or less, extrapolating costs from Falcon 1 and 9 development. Again, this could be done at much less cost (both development and operational) than is currently planned for the Orion/Ares combination. What part of already spent ten billion on Ares without its even having passed a legitimate PDR, while Elon has only spent a small fraction of a billion does Mark not understand?

This is pork, not progress.

[Late afternoon update]

Now Mark says I (in addition to fantasizing that I claimed to be his intellectual better) that breaking up CM and SM would require three launches “in a short time.” No. They would require two launches, one for each system element, and one or many launches for propellant, but none of which, other than the CM launch, would have to occur in “a short time.” Propellant could be stored on orbit for an indefinitely long time with proper depot design, and there is nothing intrinsically in an SM that couldn’t allow weeks or months of on-orbit LEO storage.

I don’t know where this myth comes from. People who want to justify tens of billions for a heavy lifter, I guess.

Political Commentary

The Chicago Way

20 Comments

Well, I certainly missed a big news day by sitting in airplanes all day.  I’m in LA, and I saw on the CNN monitor at DFW that the governor of Illinois (and one of the “guys in Obama’s neighborhood”) has been not just indicted, but hauled off to Club Fed.  I think that there will be political repercussions…

[Late evening update]

Well, that was quick. Illinois resident David Burge has found the governor’s Ebay page. I particularly like the “slightly retarded” used Senator for sale.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Grim Anniversary

10 Comments

It’s been seventy-five years since Stalin deliberately starved the kulaks. As many (or more) died as in Hitler’s Holocaust, but it was all right, because his intentions were good, and you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

It’s also the anniversary of an early, and odious, failure of journalism on the part of the New York Times. It should be ashamed that it not only accepted the Pulitzer for Duranty’s fawning lies and propaganda, but kept it for so many years.

And Ilya Somin has some thoughts on the less-than-useful distinction between genocide and mass murder.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

I Feel Her Pain

8 Comments

Some thoughts from another Flint native on the plight of GM:

If GM were a horse I would call the vet and have it put out of its misery. I realize how a failed GM will devastate my family as well as this entire country. I get it probably more than most people because I grew up in Flint. But there has to be a better way then giving them our hard earned tax money.

Giving them what they want is only prolonging the inevitable. And, then who is next? Who else wants to go and beg to our government for free money? Steel companies, airlines, states like California? Heck, maybe I should drive to DC in my GM car and get in line?

I wish I had the answers and I realize what a tough job our politicians have on this one. I literally feel torn in half about this. After another blow up on the phone with my mom today I also realize that I can no longer talk to her about it.

I also have family who will be financially devastated by a complete failure of the company (and are already hurting — as she notes, parts of the city of Flint are becoming a post-apocalyptic nightmare). But the current plan is just delaying the inevitable, at taxpayer expense. Their only real hope is a legitimate bankruptcy.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Flint’s (lunatic) mayor to the rescue with a plan:

Williamson is sending City Administrator Darryl Buchanan to Washington D.C. next week to tout his big idea to save the auto industry as part of the Mayors Automotive Coalition lobbying Congress for the Detroit Three’s $34-billion loan.

Williamson said under his idea, each household with a registered voter would receive a $5,000 voucher to purchase a new car. He hasn’t calculated how much the plan would cost taxpayers.

Williamson said the government should use some of the $700 billion previously set aside to bail out the financial industry to fund the vouchers.

“They’re using the money for the wrong things,” Williamson said.

He said he realizes some people may not believe that his ideas would work.

“A lot of people are in shock when I come up with these ideas,” said Williamson, who has previously touted his 2006 “Save All of America” plan aimed at saving General Motors and Delphi Corp. “Many think they’re off the wall, but I’m thinking.”

People in shock when you come up with these ideas? You don’t say…

Will there be a chicken in every pot, too?

[Late afternoon update]

Why the auto bailout sux:

4. Where are provisions for dealing with rewriting the Big Three’s union contracts? Where are provisions for preempting state franchise laws so that dealer contracts can be cancelled or rewritten? The Big Three have to reduce labor costs. They have to shed brands, which means closing some dealers. They have to develop a modern distribution system, which means fundamental changes in their relationship with the dealers.

5. It’s interesting that Ford is asking only for a line of credit rather than cash in hand. I suspect that their reluctance to take the cash now has a lot to do with Dodd’s efforts to force Rick Waggoner out at GM. It’s no secret that the current generation of Fords are modest talents, at best. Yet, so long as the Fords have their super voting rights stock, they will exercise control. One wonders whether Dodd would try to force them to give up their voting control as a condition of taking the cash.

6. If Rick Waggoner has to go, why doesn’t Ron Gettelfinger? The UAW is just as much at fault here as management.

I think we know why. And I’d be a lot more impressed with Chris Dodd’s demand that Wagoner leave if Senator Countrywide would first set an example by resigning from the Senate over his shameful role in the much larger finance disaster.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Whale In A Barrel

5 Comments

Meet Tim Blair, with his fisking atomizer.

[Late morning update]

Mark Steyn piles on:

I’d certainly like him to fix my toilet, and would be willing to chip in the Greyhound fare up to New Hampshire. Given the amount of lead in his prose, Mr Egan would seem to be a natural pipe fitter.

In related news: Chicago Trib seeking to avoid bankruptcy; Miami Herald’s principal asset is the lot the building is on; S&P downgrades New York Times to junk.

Much of the media certainly deserve to die, notwithstanding that even quality publications can’t hold off the onslaught of the Internet, but I still long for the days when a New York Times was worth reading.

[Early afternoon update]

We knew this was coming: a proposed federal bailout for writers. I agree with Mark Steyn:

But what about the legions of American satirists about to be laid off because fellows like Pinsky are writing stuff like this for real?

To paraphrase Lili Tomlin, no matter how satirical I get, I can’t keep up.

[Bumped to the top]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Pack, Not Herd, Part Two

7 Comments

This sort of thing is the consequence of intentionally disarming ourselves, and frightening people with nonsensical scare stories about guns:

Lt. Mitchell said that, apart from Alandis’ denial that he made any threats, investigators quickly realized that the only gun Alandis had was his cap gun.

“In this day and time, we do not take anything lightly, whether it’s a toy gun or a real weapon, for the safety of the kids and everyone involved, the safety of the school. That’s our main concern.”

Tosha Ford agrees that Alandis should not have brought the toy gun to school, and did not know that he did, but she said the reaction that unfolded was overblown, due to rumors that school children quickly spread.

“Someone heard that Alandis had a toy gun in his bookbag and said, ‘Oh, Alandis is going to bring a gun, he’s going to shoot everybody.’ He [Alandis] was wrong, he should never have taken it to school. And I told him that. And he’s being punished” at home. “But also on the other side of the coin, I think it’s a travesty what’s happened to him…. For them to say that’s he’s made terroristic threats is just ridiculous. We’ve taken it and changed what ‘terroristic threats’ was meant to be for. And with children saying that ‘he’s got a gun, he’s got a gun,’ it’s gotten blown out of proportion…. I don’t think they handled it very well. I know it’s their job, but I think they took it to the extreme.”

I had lots of cap guns when I was a kid, as did most of my friends. I thought that individual caps were too tame, though. I used to like to hit a whole roll on the sidewalk with a hammer for a much more satisfying bang.

I don’t recall whether or not I ever took one to school, but if I had, neither pupils or teachers would have been so clueless and naive as to have confused it with a real gun. And the worst penalty for doing so that I can imagine would have been confiscation by the teacher. Until the end of the school day, that is, at which point it would probably have been returned. The notion that the decision about this kid is whether or not he should be put in juvenile detention, or merely on probation, shows the insane depths of anti-gun (and with butter knives being confiscated and wielders suspended, anti-weapons-in-general) paranoia to which our society has descended.