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December 30, 2005
Newspaper Economics
Here's another reason the Washington Post is threatened by Bill Roggio:
Newspapers are seeking blacker ink next year by raising advertising rates. But with growing competition from new media for both advertisers and readers, it will be a tough sell.
...
Rate increases may be difficult to pull off as a two-decade slump in newspaper circulation appears to be worsening. Circulation -- a key metric for setting advertising rates -- fell 2.6% on average at daily newspapers in the sixth-month period ending Sept. 30, a bigger drop than any comparable sixth-month period since 1991, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Many younger people have failed to pick up the habit of reading papers and a lot of older readers are switching to reading the news online or catching it on 24-hour news channels.
Only a newspaper could figure that it could raise the price of a commodity with declining value.
December 29, 2005
Nothing New at the NSA
It's not as though the NSA hasn't been listening to Americans' international phone calls for a long time.
I just finished buying a car, and just about every salesman I dealt with was ex-military. One of them, trying to warm up, got to talking about his rotation out at the NSA. He recounted in some detail a conversation between an overseas soldier and his stateside wife, and then how they left the circuit open, and heard the wife invite her boyfriend over.
This was, I note, a couple of days before the Times printed the details of the currently-controversial program.
Mr. Pot, Please Meet Mr. Kettle
The Wall Street Journal today reports on the effectiveness that independent conservative groups are showing in influencing the national debate over the war, especially in reminding people that Saddam did at one point have WMDs, and that he did have an ongoing relationship with al Qaeda in particular, and a sponsorship of terrorism in general.
The focus of the article is Move America Forward. If the group were merely operating with White House indifference, that would be enough. The Administration's refusal to stand by obvious pre-war facts make MAF look more Catholic than the Pope.
Naturally, the Left's response is to try to misuse the law to shut down debate.
Liberals question how the group has maintained its status as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, which requires strict nonpartisanship, given the anti-Democratic tone of its campaigns. The group's Web site, www.moveamericaforward.org, for example, attacks the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, referring to "Howard Dean types who only see a future of failure for this country."
"When you have people participating in partisan activities with nonprofit dollars, that's really something the IRS needs to look at," says Tom Matzzie, the Washington director of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org, another frequent target for Move America Forward's rhetoric. "An organization with a shady tax status participating in partisan activities and saying things that aren't true is a rogue element in American politics."
When asked about using IRS rules or FBI files to shut down political opposition, "We could do that," said Mr. Matzzie, "but that would be wrong, that's for sure." No, I made that part up. At least. I think I did.
December 25, 2005
Credibility
I just saw an ad for some NBA video game or gaming system, that tries to show how realistic it is by focusing on the sweat on Shaq's neck at the free-throw line.
Then they go and throw it all away by having him make the free throw.
Fact-Checking the DenPo
This isn't exactly media bias so much as media sloppiness. Really simple things that imply that the paper's editors and fact-checkers are either non-existent or very overpaid.
Let's begin with "insider trading." According to the Post,
Insider trading is a term that encompasses any stock transaction by a company's management, board or significant shareholder. What makes it illegal is if those insiders trade on key information not publicly available.
Well, this is sort of right. The problem is that insider trading encomapsses anyone trading on non-public information, not just the corporate bigwigs. It means that you, yes you, are at risk, if the company CEO gives you a heads-up, and you trade on that information, even if you don't work for the company. The "insider trading" reports that are filed with the SEC are restricted to senior management and major shareholders, which may have confused the reporter. But since this was in an article about alleged criminal activity at Qwest, so the relevant part was the insider information, not the status of the trader.
The relevant New Year's Resolution suggests itself.
December 24, 2005
Christmas Time Is Here, By Golly...
Disapproval would be folly. Along with the obligatory denunciations of excessive materialism and trivialization. (This notwithstanding. Jonathan, really.)
There's a point where people think that the Commercialization of Christmas started, and that it's always about 10 years before they started thinking about it. I remember reading Peanuts comics in the 70s, with Linus & Charlie Brown complaining about it. But Tom Lehrer sang about it in the 60s. Stan Freberg satirized it in the 50s. (Hat Tip: Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anywhere Else)
Ah, well, the 50s were the Organization Man and the 60s were decadent, so what could you expect? Now, the 40s, there was an earnest decade. Really? White Christmas? Meet Me in St. Louis? It's a Wonderful Life? They may be all about community and family, but not much about religion. Go read through the whole set of Dickens's Christmas Stories, and tell me where religion shows up. ("God Bless Us, Everyone" could as well be Thanksgiving, if the English had Thanksgiving.)
The Puritans banned celebrating Christmas because they thought the celebrations were frivolous.
Ah, I hear you cry, easy to say this about someone else's holiday. What if it were you own? Well, it is. People know about dreydles & latkes but forget about the confrontation with Greek culture. Next year's Purim slogan should be "Putting the 'Haman' back in '
The problem isn't that Christmas (or any of the other holidays) are trivialized, but that they're infantilized. Tha we substitute the form for the content doesn't make the form irrelevant. It's one thing to get trapped by the things we do to celebrate, but it's still ok to enjoy them.
December 23, 2005
Happy Holidays
Gotcha.
Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas to everyone! For once, the movie theaters won't be crowded Saturday night.
Tom Daschle, Strict Constructionist
And legislative historian, too:
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
Warrentless. But not domestic, and not surveillance.
Senatitis Comes Early...
... to Colorado's former Attorney General:
"The president could have gotten permission (for wiretaps) from the FISA court," Salazar said Monday, noting the secret federal court was establish for intelligence purposes. "There is a court procedure for this. It's a very important question whether the president has broken any laws in ordering this surveillance and the American public needs to know the truth."
Salazar sent a letter to Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Monday, saying the FISA legislation allowing secret surveillance and searches requires FISA court approval.
"The administration's reported assertion that it did not do so because it was inconvenient to do so at least arguably constitutes a violation of federal law that should be investigated by Congress," he wrote.
On the radio, I also heard a radio snippet of him saying that he didn't know of any legal precedent or statute under which such surveillance would be legal, which is a much stronger statement. Also a much more ignorant one.
Now, this comment came a couple of days ago. But at the very least, it implies a need to issue pronouncements on subjects where the Senator hasn't got a clue yet. I know he claims to be a supporter of the Patriot Act, possibly a holdover from his selective law-and-order days here in Denver. But he's also an attorney, has attorneys on staff, and could at least do a little background research before opening his mouth.
Even if it's only reading this and this. Waiting for the latter would have delayed the Senator's Olympian comments for all of one day, although he would have missed the Sunday papers, to be sure.
December 22, 2005
...And In With the New
Hey, when you've been on everything paved, there's only one way to get to new places.
Despite the name, there are certain limitations. For instance, I think it's actually named for the amount of gas it uses. And with the soft top, I'll not only hear my radio but most other cars' as well.
But this particular model has an extra 15" of space, and a longer wheelbase. It feels a little more SUV-like, a lot smoother ride, but it still handles like a Jeep.
Lat year, on a lark, I bought a series of books on 4WD drives out west, looking for ones that the Contour could handle. Now, I just need to tough it out until Spring. Or, head over into Utah....
Out With the Old...
It lasted me 8+ years and 128,000 miles, almost all of it with me behind the wheel. It took me to the Pacific Northwest and back, and to California and back. It took me all over Utah and Nevada and New Mexico and Wyoming. It especially took me all over Colorado, and probably drove on just about everything in the state that was paved and west of the Divide. And a fair amount that wasn't paved, including Boreas Pass, Buffalo Pass, Black Sage Pass, and Cordova Pass.
The trunk held a ton. In addition to me, it hauled tools and a dog and skach and drywall - lots of drywall - and wood and shelving and rocks and dirt and yucca and hens 'n' chicks. The trunk still had pine needles from the skach and the roof had dents from the drywall and wood, enough that two dealers had to be reassured that I hadn't rolled the thing.
It had idiosyncrasies, like passenger's side front window that had a tendency to go off the rails, and require a manual override to finish rolling up. Towards the end, things had started to go wrong, and keeping it repaired would have cost the equivalent of car payments. I had hoped to keep it going for another year or so, even on life support, but in the end, I asked a little too much of it.
So it was a good car, not a great car. But for a very long time, it was my car.
Juror #4530 - Denver District Court
Appearance Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2006.
Great. Just great.
December 21, 2005
Radio Daze
Councilman Elbra Wedgeworth has way too much time on her hands. And apparently, the leaders of the Denver Black and Hispanic Chambers of Commerce are seeing a slow holiday season, too. They also seem to have confused CBS with NPR.
All three met with CBS radio in Denver to protest a format change:
Wedgeworth; Wil Alston, vice president of the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce; and Jeffrey Campos, president and CEO of the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, met with Don Howe, senior vice president for CBS Radio in Denver. They emphasized to Howe the station's importance in the Latino and African-American communities.
Central to the meeting was the sudden demise Thursday of the area's only rhythm-and-blues outlet, axed after six years on air.
...
Independently, Urban Spectrum, a newspaper published in the Five Points neighborhood, launched a campaign Tuesday to let station management "know there is a voice out there they have turned their back on. They have a mandate to serve the public, and no one asked the public before switching."
Actually, they asked the public every day, and the public yawned. This was the only station in town with this format, they had no competition for this niche, and they still couldn't drum up enough listeners to pay the freight.
A few years ago, when KVOD, a commercial station and the only classical station in Denver, folded, CPR took over the call letters (although not the frequency), and began a 24-hour classical station. Maybe the aggrieved parties need to ask CPR to start sharing time on their classical network, but they need to stop playing program director with someone else's revenue stream.
UPDATE: I wrote this late last night, and clearly wasn't thinking. The Hispanic & Black Chambers of Commerce? Have they no advertisers?
Great Teams Aren't Always Great
Since Sunday, when the Bolts beat the Colts in Indy, people have been asking whether or not Indianapolis needs to be worried. Are they suddenly vulnerable?
No.
As a Redskin fan during the first Gibbs Administration, er, era, I got to see a couple of truly great teams up close, every week. The 1983 team never got its due, because Riggo's Rangers swaggered into the Super Bowl like they didn't have to practice, and got their heads handed to them by the Raiders.
But the 1991 team was special. They went 14-2, and if they had needed that last game in Philly, they would have won it. Even they lost one meaningful game, to the Cowboys in Week 12. Michael Irvin was open all day against the legendary Darrell Green, and the next year, the Cowboy dynasty would begin. They Cowboys were good, they just weren't ready yet, and the Skins were a buzzsaw.
The game everyone forgets is a 16-13 overtime win against woeful Houston at RFK. The only reason they got a chance to win in overtime was that Houston missed an extra point in the last minutes of regulation. It was a close scare at home against a lousy team. And not a single playoff game was in doubt.
Now, the one difference between those Skins and these Colts is that Gibbs's teams had won before. As in, won Super Bowls. But the quarterback was average (he'd fold like a cheap suit the next year when the offensive line was held together with duct tape). The receivers were old. And a lot of the linebacking corps and offensive backfield hadn't been on the 1988 team that won. They picked it up from the veterans. It shows the durability of a winning corporate culture, and subsequent years have show how hard one is to build.
So yes, Indianapolis can beat themselves, but they're still the class of the league.
Open-Source Capitalism
One of the more amazing things about business in this country is how open it is. Most, but not all, traded companies will willingly talk to you about their annual reports, explain their footnotes, discuss strategy. Listen in to a few conference calls of Fortune 500 companies, and you'll see what I mean. When I needed an explanation of some inventory number from a large company for a school project, I simply called the investor relations number on the website, and one of the accountants spent about 15 minutes with me on it.
Now, most companies won't reveal trade secrets. And some companies' management don't like to talk the press, but frequently that's just because they don't see a need to play a public relations game. But those are rare and can only get away with it as long as they make money and stay out of jail.
It makes the dereliction of analysts who clearly couldn't comprehend Enron's business model all the more unforgivable.
December 20, 2005
Sledgehammer to a Fly
A District Judge today ruled that a Dover, Pa. school board decision to require students to hear a short statement raising doubts about Darwin and suggesting intelligent design as an alternative is unconstitutional. I'm no fan of ID, but there are a lot of things not quite right about this.
First, note that, since the school board instituted the policy,
... all eight of the school board incumbents who favored teaching intelligent design were defeated in an election in November by candidates who opposed including it in the curriculum.
The political system seems capable of handling these things without judicial intervention.
Moreover, the ruling took 139 pages. Now, I'm sure the judge wanted to be thorough, but in my experience, when it takes 139 pages to explain your reasoning, your reasoning lacks clarity.
Look, I don't think ID qualifies as science; there's more than a whiff of theology in any deus ex machina, and ID certainly posits a deus operating ex the machina of the physical world. Still, it's a notion that many religions could subscribe to, so it hardly sounds like a Constitutionally-prohibited establishment of religion.
Moreover, I'm afraid that it could be too easily extended to other questions. Right now, physics can tell us why the something that there is looks the way it does. Physics can't tell us why there's something instead of nothing, and probably never will. Would a teach who asks that question, and then points out that philosophers as far back as Aristotle considered it a proof of God's existence be violating the Constitution?
I'm not sure what arguments were presented to the judge, and it's possible that he felt obliged to rule on a constitutuional issue, but constitutionality is supposed to be a last resort, and it seems to me there were lots of other outs here before getting to that.
Disappointed
One of the reasons that the wiretap story has gotten so much attention is the initial and ongoing NYT and WaPo characterization of it as "domestic spying." Since the phone calls were all international, this is perhaps 50% true and certainly 95% misleading.
Among those most disappointed must the the Air America folks. For a while there, they had hope that someone might actually be listening.
Gasket Case
So, when I was up in the mountains for Thanksgiving, I got the car onto some snow. While I was looking for a good place to turn around and get off the snow, it got stuck. In the process of rocking it back and forth, all in low gear, of course, I overheated the engine, blowing off about half the antifreeze.
Now I had thought about just leaving the car there to tow, but it was Friday afternoon, snow was predicted for the weekend, and I was fairly sure that if I didn't get the thing out of there now, I wouldn't see it again until the retreating glacier disgorged it in May.
So, it was 30 miles in high gear and coasting back to Basalt, which apparently managed to fry the head gasket.
The old car was good to me, although it had almost 130K on it, and things were starting to break. But it's been a long, slow, frustrating funeral, and both it and I deserve better.
The last time I bought a new car, it was fairly simple. I had had three Ford Escorts in a row, and wanted to move up, to the Contour. (The Sebring convertible was out of my price range, and I wanted something new, not used.) I decided I wanted last year's model, but new, with a power option package, and a stick. I called a Ford dealership in the area, they located the one such car left between the Mississippi and the Continental Divide, and - lucky me! - it was on south Broadway. I looked up the invoice price of the car and options in Edmunds, added a couple of hundred dollars, and that was that.
This time, I had two possible models in mind, the Jeep Wrangler and the Subaru Outback. Very different cars, but both with good off-road capability and each with certain advantages. Thus far, I've test-driven 7 cars at 5 different dealerships, with one more left to go. Since used cars are on the menu this time, I've spent more time on the Net doing research than I thought humanly possible.
While some of the dealerships seem staffed by normal people, others display that schizophrenia which the manager and the salesman blame on each other. I have been invited down to take a long test-drive, only to be told that they wanted to run credit first. I have been quoted a number, only to be told that it was just an example. I've had a Nissan dealer tell me that he had no way of finding out the sale date of the Jeep he wanted to sell me. (Hey, bud, ever heard of CarFax?) A couple of dealerships have treated me well, showing me their invoices, and another let me take a Wrangler home overnight. But I gotta tell you, it's a real mixed bag.
I'm finally down to three cars, and if I don't hear back from the owner of that last one, I'm down to two.
I cannot tell you how happy I will be when this is over.
December 18, 2005
Carnival of the Capitalists
Coyote Blog has it this week, with a new sponsor.
Hell Of a Way to Run an Airport
Apparently, government isn't any better at running an airport than it is at running a railroad. Commercial or passenger. If you remember, Conrail was formed as a government-run railroad after it kept so many failing lines on life-support that the whole northeast corridor part of the industry collapsed.
It seems that the Denver City Council decided to just skip the whole "regulating-into-bankruptcy" phase of the process, and go straight to owning and running Denver International Airport itself. Now, while it's considering relaxing purchasing and hiring rules, there's only a hint of a whisper of a suggestion that they might think about beginning to study actually creating a private airport authority. Don't hold your breath.
The most offensive aspect of the city's management is probably its minority set-asides for airport concessions. Which is why Wilma Webb, wife of former mayor Wellington Webb, who clearly needs the help, has an interest in a shop there.
The most damaging aspect though, is probably its continued favoritism to United Airlines. If there were a way of assessing it, United could count the city's goodwill on its balance sheet. And hometown airline Frontier would have to write it up as a liability.
The latest example comes in the form of a deal to let United transfer $184 million in debt to DIA in return for - well, it's hard to say what, exactly. Here's what the Rocky lists as the benefits to DIA:
• Connections: The carrier commits to increasing the level of passengers connecting through DIA to 7.5 million in 2006, 7.6 million in 2007 and 7.7 million in 2008 through 2025. That would lead to an estimated $9 million in additional annual concession and passenger fee revenues for DIA.
• Concourse A: United will fly a minimum of four flights a day through 2025 from each of its six gates in Concourse A, which the carrier uses for its Ted service. United said it currently is exceeding that threshold.
• Concourse B: The airline will shelve plans for a new regional jet facility on Concourse B, saving DIA $2 million annually in construction and other costs.
So United is promising more connecting flights to DIA, with a whopping 2.7% in the first 2 years, and no growth promised thereafter. It's also promising to meet a minimum it says it's already meeting. The only potentially attractive feature here is that the airline is letting the airport off the hook for a regional jet facility, for United, that the airport had agreed to pay for. Yes, those sharp businessmen over at City Hall had agreed to pay for more gates for an airline that was already in bankruptcy.
The cancellation has got to come as a disappointment to Phelps Program Management, but as a relief to just about everyone else. Phelps had the thankless job of rescuing the baggage system from ignominy, and may have reduced costs, but otherwise, the system still isn't working properly. The company's web page for the project shows baggage ramps and carts, but no baggage, so at least they can't be accused of false advertising.
Contrast this with the way DIA is planning to expand for Frontier:
One possible solution: revive Frontier's planned expansion of Concourse A. The carrier delayed the project - initially estimated at nearly $80 million - last year because of industry turmoil and the uncertain future of its bankrupt rival United. In that scenario, Frontier and other carriers would repay DIA for the expansion through rent and other fees.
Frontier's not in dire straits, but they're being artificially constrained from expanding, and it may very well keep them from making their most efficient use of their new debt issue. More ironically, the regional jet facility was supposed to be part of a plan to free up a few gates here, a few gates there, for Frontier, but apparently, that's fallen through now, as well.
I know this is just howling into the wind, but guys, how about a private airport authority, and a gate auction.
Just a thought.
UPDATE: It occurs to me that the one weak point in the Southwest conference call to announce their new Denver service was the CEO's confidence that something could be worked out regarding expansion plans. They must be just thrilled with this announcement.
An announcement that United considers so critical to their plans, that creates such important future obligations on their part, that they didn't even issue a press release on it.
Should Law Schools Require Legal History?
Probably. It appears that students do study certain landmark cases in their specialized classes. And yet, there's little if any sense of the overall development of American law. With over half the curriculum given over to electives, there's plenty of room to add in a few more required courses. She mentioned that while DU does have an elective legal history course, it was taught at the undergraduate level, with little if any legal analysis required.
I was talking with a law-student friend of mine yesterday, not particularly conservative, and she remarked that after having actually read Roe, she was surprised to find just what a lousy opinion it was, especially compared to earlier opinions, and that she'd be perfectly happy overturning it and starting from scratch.
Imagine the effect of such a course on the bulk of law students, and then ask why such a course isn't required.
December 16, 2005
The Governor Boots Immigration, Too
Governor Owens, trying to get back into the graces of the free-market conservatives whom he abandoned in his rush to raise taxes last year, has now endorsed the idea of a privately-run guest-worker program for the US. The image that comes to mind is that of a plane, having lost hydraulics, trying to steer using engine power, and wildly overcorrecting back and forth.
I'm as free-market a conservative as they come, but even I can see that this is, to be blunt, a horrible idea.
To be fair, this isn't the fox guarding the henhouse. This is the fox being given the keys to the henhouse while the owner goes out recruiting more foxes. Business doesn't want the laws we have now enforced. Their entire incentive is to keep the borders as open as possible. I have no doubt that business could devise a plan that was easy-to-implement. Also easy-to-outlive, outrun, evade, avoid, duplicate, deceive, and corrupt.
Once it became clear that some guy with a box of green paper and a Xerox machine was handing out tickets in Tijuana, the government would have to step in, anyway, and not merely to create its own system, but to ferociously prosecute anyone who had come within a hundred miles of the border, er, system, set up privately.
About the only benefit I can see is that it's given Joan Fitz-Gerald a chance to prove what a fool she is:
Senate President Joan Fitz- Gerald, D-Jefferson County, said the plan appears to favor big business and wealthier undocumented immigrants who can afford to return to their country and go through the process.
This is a woman who clearly has all the skills necessary to serve in a legislature. Her class-warfare instincts are so well-honed that they even extend to dividing up one of her party's core constituencies into haves and have-nots. Or in this case, haves and don't-needs.
She even manages to accept the frankly bizarre notion that anyone already here illegally from Guatemala or Ramadi is going to cheerfully stroll back across the border and literally, not figuratively, stand in line. Suppose he's denied re-entry, especially now that physical border control is supposed to be more effective? Why take the risk dealing honestly with a system that's proven itself with decades of ineptitude?
Admittedly, the Democrats are worse. They're happy to sandbag business with the responsibility of proving that an applicant is here legally, above and beyond checking Social Security numbers, which apparently the government can't certify the integrity of any more. But they only want to shut off the private carrot. Schools, hospitals, public services of all kinds would remain available, across an effective open border. The net result is a system where illegals can freely come across in search of government benefits without even the promise of work. This doesn't merely bankrupt us financially, it imports all the worst aspects of the world the migrants are trying to esacpe.
Whatever border control is, it's primarily a sovereignty issue. We can choose to have an open policy, as we did for many decades, or a closed policy, as we did for many decades after that. But we can't credibly have any policy unless we can control, document, and potentially deport the people coming across. Fobbing off administrative responsibility onto a group whose interests lie entirely in the other direction makes no sense at all.
December 15, 2005
Mother of Presidents
A new Rasmussen poll has recently-departed Virginia Governor Mark Warner leading current Senator George Allen 49% - 44%. This basically reflects the same margin that Warner-protege Tim Kaine had over Allen-protege Jerry Kilgore in this fall's Governor's election. Still, both men remain very popular, with Allen all but assured of re-election in '06. (If Allen's keeping Dick Wadhams around, it can only be for some other reason. Cough.) For Virginians, at any rate, this is a choice between two good candidates, rather than a lesser-of-two-evils.
Some of Warner's lead may come from the fact that Allen hasn't been governor for 8 years, and more and more people think of him as a senator first. Senators do not make good Presidental candidates, largely because of the nature of the institution. But Allen was a governor first, and has stated on a number of occasions that he prefers executive office to legislative. (It's the same advantage Hillary has, although she's got more of an Imperial mentality, I think.)
I've thought for a while that Hillary's greatest challenge will come from a centrist Democratic governor, someone who doesn't owe her anything and who can carry some southern states. Warner may be the guy. Alllen has national clout from his successful management of last year's Senate races. It's probably too much to hope for that Virginia would produce both nominees, but it sure would make for a fun campaign.
Is That Taxis or Taxes?
Exhibit A of what happens when the government gets too involved in "regulation" should be the taxi system in just about any major city. For some reason, taxis are considered a "utility." This leads to spectacles like the Public Utilities Commission keeping fares too low when gas prices are high, and then raising fares after gas has fallen again. While Denver has avoided the sort of corruption that has led to drivers using medallions to stop bullets in places like New York, we still don't actually get the benefits of competition.
I completely understand the need for a city to maintain certain minimum standards in catering to its guests. There's probably no quicker way to lose convention business that for word to get around that the driver didn't even charge the rats for sharing the ride. But there's a perfectly good way to achieve safety and cleanliness while still allowing prices and supply to find their natural levels.
License fees, rather than securing a spot in an artificially-limited supply chain, could pay for inspections. In theory, there's no limit as to how many cabs could operate, but of course, there's a point where drivers couldn't find enough fares to stay in business. Virginia has just such an inspection system for private, non-commercial cars.
Price-signalling would be a little more difficult, but there's no reason why a taxi couldn't have its fares printed on the side of the cab, or on little cards inside the airport. Even now, cabbies are pretty good at estimating fares given a destination. A company that maintained higher standard or had extra perks, like in-car wifi, could charge more, while a company that didn't charge enough to cover its maintenance costs would quickly be put out of business by inspections.
There is a risk of sort of a Gresham's Law of cabs here, where the line could get clogged by too-expensive cabs that couldn't find fares. if a cop can wander up and down the line telling me that I can't wait to pick someone up, they can make cabs circle the same way. They won't like burning the extra gas, and that's the point.
There's no question that fares for normal, run-of-the-mill rides would tend towards the same price, with very little variation. But that price would better-reflect market realities rather than trailing them, and it would also allow for some innovation in services without having to hire a limo.
Cash Bar Mitzvah
The Washington Post article on bar mitzvahs that only a Congressman could love really struck a nerve. Sure, it's all fun and games to rent out Wings over the Rockies for Yoni Tidi to do his patented recreation of the Entebbe rescue operation. But there's something fundamentally misdirected about celebrating the onset of adult moral responsibility with Peter Pan-like wish-fulfillment.
In fact, we've been here before. The reason that Jewish funerals use simple pine caskets is to spare the feelings of the poor who could barely scrape together enough for one, while the wealthy were spending money on oak sarcophagi. A similar thing has happened recenly in the Orthodox community, where weddings were turning into family potlatches, with social pressure forcing families to spend more than they had to keep up appearances.
In the spirit of school uniforms, a number of rabbis have since written letters forbidding overdoing it at weddings. In the case of the bar mitzvahs, though, it's unlikely that the offenders are paying attention. Still, with so many real community needs going unmet (East Denver's mikvah, for instance, is closed, pending enough funds to buy a new roof; yes, this is a shameless bleg, and anything at all you feel moved to contribute is greatly appreciated), spending $100K to boost a kid's popularity is warped.
Nobody ever said you can't buy friends, but 50 Cent seems a poor substitute for real community.
UPDATE: Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers. See, now there's a mensch...
RMA Fitness Day
Jared's not the only one working out. For the last month+, I've been downstairs each morning on the stationary bike. I figure if the bike only needs one tire, I don't need any, and I'm fixin' to get rid of mine. Starting at 20 minutes each morning, I'm adding 5 minutes each week, so this week, I've been riding for 40 minutes a day. The goal is to get up to an hour a day.
So far, the results have been less-than-spectacular; I'm down about four pounds, but that'll speed up as I spend more time burning fat. Last fall, a year ago, I did the same routine, and managed to drop about 20 pounds before some mysterious but persistent stomach-and-flu thing put an end to my routine. But having lost the weight before, I'm pretty confident I can do it again.
Having the bike downstairs is very convenient, and probably cuts the time investment down by 30 minutes, which can be better-spent pedaling. But it's also pretty darn boring, and morning AM radio in this town is also pretty terrible. Laura Ingraham doesn't even know how to be decent to callers who agree with her; those who disagree average about four words. Local sportstalk is consistent with what I know about it elsewhere - it exists to fire coaches and players. Air America has some entertainment value, until you realize that the people calling in probably believe what they're saying, at which point I start looking around to see what it would take to turn the basement into a survival area.
The best answer is probably Teaching Company classical music or history lectures, which demand just the right level of engagement. I've got the American Literature series, but to get anything at all out of those, you need to read the books, and the point here is to make use of down time, not to let it colonize the rest of my day, so for the moment, it looks like I'll be ordering another set.
December 13, 2005
Day By Day By Ramadi
The good news: a top al-Qaeda terrorist has been arrested in Ramadi, apparently turned in by the locals. So while there's more reason for optimism, there's also reason for caution.
But let's go back a couple of weeks, to the beginning of December. At that time, there was sort of a town-meeting, organized by US forces but supposed to be representative of city. The Post reports that during the meeting, gunmen, presumably al-Qaeda, were firing mortars at the meeting and shots in the street.
They also report that many of the attendees were referring to themselves by their former ranks in Hussein's military. Now when an old Confederate soldier refers to himself as "Colonel" at an 1890s barbecue, it's pretty harmless, but there's a lot of evidence that a lot of these guys really mean it.
If Buckley is right, and the insurgency is a combination of al-Qaeda and Baathists, it may be the Baathists who turned them in, or encouraged people to do so. It may also be that people in this tribal society are tired enough of the al-Qaeda-type shooting up the joint that they're looking to the Baathists to maintain order after we're gone from Anbar.
If that's true, the Baathists will have secured a political base by keeping order - exactly the situation we're looking to avoid. Never mind that for now, they're participating in the process. To me, that suggests that they (along with that Man of the People, al-Sadr) have just figured out the way to keep us happy and to get us out is to run in the elections. One of the great lessons of the 20th Century is how easy it is for totalitarians to hijack the democratic process, gain key ministries, and then overthrow the whole thing by force.
Keep your eye on the ball.
December 12, 2005
Snowy Days and Mondays
When I was a kid in Fairfax County, Virginia, just outside of DC, we used to joke about snow days. In February of 1978, we got something like 3 feet of snow, and it shut the schools down for a week. The county was clearly unprepared for this sort of thing, although at the time, we all figured that it was the start of the long-heralded Next Ice Age. From then on, school officials were so spooked they would cancel school or shorten the day on the flimsiest of pretexts, sometimes even on the prediction of snow.
That was then. In today's Wall Street Journal, Susan Cass writes:
What's the deal with snow days in the South? As a fairly new Virginian, moving here last year from Boston, I have been amazed at the locals' reaction to small amounts of snow.
On Friday, our 8-year-old daughter Daniella came bounding into our room at 6:30 a.m., announcing that it was snowing and asking if school was canceled. A quick look out the window revealed about two inches of snow on the ground, with light flurries in the air, so I quickly dashed her hopes. Nice try, I said, but you're going to school. Silly me! When I checked the Web site, I was shocked. The county had closed all the schools for the day. I wondered if maybe they knew something I didn't about a looming blizzard, but as the sun rose on a glorious, cool day, and the snow started melting, I was left with the question: This is a snow day?
A few days earlier, the county had delayed school for two hours because it was too cold for the kids to stand at the bus stop. It was around 30 degrees. Above zero. In December.
Not that this was the reason, but what I didn't know at age 11 was the fear that some newly-minted bureaucrat, from, say, Warren, Ohio, to pick a place at random, who couldn't drive a snowmobile on a snowpack, would find himself taking a turn a little too fast and plow into the side of a bus. DC traffic is a perfect metaphor for the local monopoly. Local drivers - mostly immigrants, really - do just fine as long as conditions are benign. Then, even before the first flakes hit, their senses desert them. Drivers who've never seen a turn signal before in their lives panic at the first sight of yellow, and the city descends into chaos and gridlock. One local radio station used to run fake ads for stores called "Bread, Milk, and Toilet Paper," which were only open when snow was predicted.
Some People (like the RIAA) Never Learn
The Recording Industry Association of America has made a long career out of opposing new ways to market its product. It didn't like tape, or 8-track tape (no loss there), or DAT, or taping off the radio; it really didn't like CDs, and we've seen their recent reaction to Napster. Reproducibility is their enemy; digital their nemesis-until-death. Not only has this been foolish, it's usually been a losing battle. Bringing criminal charges against the occasional downloader is just liable to make people more eager to avoid paying the companies in the first place.
Now, they're at it again, this time with satellite radio (subscription required). I don't subscribe to XM or Sirius, but apparently, they're now offering the equivalent of subscribe-pods, which let users record and store songs, delete ones they don't like, and then even replay them in "shuffle" mode. Two caveats: users can't transfer the songs to other media, and they have to keep subscribing to the service to keep listening to their downloaded music.
The RIAA is all in a tizzy, claiming that this is recording of songs, and that since their royalty rates are lower for broadcast or streaming than for purchase, they're getting cheated. My guess is that they're not fully valuing that ongoing revenue stream. Remember, I have to keep paying that monthly fee to listen to what I've downloaded.
I don't think XM and Sirius are even arguing on principle here (although they're certainly arguing about higher royalty fees):
XM's new device, the Nexus, won't be out until early next year, but analysts expect strong sales. The Nexus has many similar functions to the Sirius receiver, and also allows users to purchase better-quality recordings of the songs they like through a partnership with Napster Inc. If the listener purchases a song individually, it can be transferred to other devices such as computers.
There. The satellite companies are treating purchase differently from download. If they're in a partnership with Napster, then the record labels will certainly see the purchase royalties from those sales.
The RIAA's traditional obstreperousness is becomes even more evident when you look at their further objections:
Though portable, the new receivers must be placed in a docking station to receive satellite-radio signals -- one more reason that record labels tag them as recording devices. They also can store music from sources other than satellite-radio broadcasts; for example, users can move playlists from their computers to the new players, though they can't transfer music captured from the radio to other devices.
The new receivers need to be plugged in to receive signal, so that makes them even more of a recorder. Only under the RIAA's twisted logic would a black hole that can receive but not broadcast, and which needs to be at a docking station to work, be more of a threat than a simple digital recorder.
The Weekly Carnival
Hevel Havelim, or however they spell it, is up over at Whispering Soul, and SamaBlog's got the weekly econorama. Check them both out.
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