Jones Resigns Over What?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on September 6th, 2009
Powerline nicely summarizes the problems with (now former) Obama Administration official Van Jones:
Who do they have in the White House? A self-proclaimed Communist. A vulgar Marxist twice over. A supporter of cold-blooded cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal. A 9/11 Truther . A racist hater, whose hatred extends to the United States. And insofar as his current job is concerned, we have a man who sees the “green jobs” con as a tool for overthrowing capitalism. We have, in short, the complete left-wing nightmare package.
So naturally, the Denver Post hasn’t yet printed a word about the (now former) Green Jobs Czar. The Washington Post and New York Times, would-be papers of record, finally got around to covering the controversy just in time for Jones to resign. As with the Eason Jordan affair, readers’ could be forgiven for not knowing that there even was a problem, right up until the moment that the (nor former) advisor resigned.
Of course, those outlets that are now covering the resignation are basically whitewashing the problems with Jones. Here’s the AP, as carried by the Washington Post:
Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.
“Derogatory comments” is one way of putting it. Calling them “a**holes” is another. Jones wasn’t just “linked to” efforts (note the passive voice). He actively linked himself to them by signing an online truther petition. ABC News’s Todd Connor is even more circumspect (audio not available online):
Van Jones decided to leave in light of recent questions surrounding a racially tinged speech and a petition he signed which questioned the official version of the 9/11 attacks.
Plenty of speeches are “racially tinged.” Few rise to this level of American self-hatred:
The American way, manufactuered by these white folks in office. By these rich men here to mock us. The United States is a stolen land led by right-wing, war hungry, oil thirsty. And when it’s all said and done they still can’t clean their own place because they got people of color playing servant to do that sh*t for them… The true terrorists are made in the US, in this police state… The US is a crack-fiend for oil. And they’re ready to rape, kill, assault, rob anybody and everybody…
And plenty of people have questioned the official version of 9/11. I’ve noted that having Jamie Gorelick sit in judgment on the 9/11 Commission was pretty close to the ultimate fox-guarding-the-henhouse moment. That’s a little different from asking whether “high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the attacks to occur.”
Again, readers may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about.
In fact, Obama has merely victimized himself here, by a (now former) Tsar System that end-runs around Congressional vetting, and has been victimized by a press corps sleeping-walking through life. The two are not unrelated.
Denver Traffic in Reverse
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Transportation on September 4th, 2009
INRIX has ranked Denver traffic as the 15th-worst in the country. Not so bad, perhaps, except that they also have us ranked 21st in population. This is also up from 16th in 2008, and 18th in 2007, so pretty much everything’s going in the wrong direction here.
It’s just a guess, but I don’t think this is designed to help. I think it’s designed to make driving harder, not easier. Back in May, Councilman Johnson was pushing the survey for Leetsdale Drive in her newsletter. According to traffic surveys, the Leetsdale/Colorado Blvd/Alameda Ave concoction is the most-heavily-used set of streets in Denver. So naturally, the smart thing to do is to subject the entire corridor to years of construction, in all likelihood leaving it less able to handle traffic flows.
Here’s an idea. Less money for Living Streets, more money for this.
A Feature, Not a Bug
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Health Care on September 1st, 2009
The Denver Post this morning reports on Sen. Bennet’s town hall in Pueblo, and on a Denver Chamber of Commerce poll (PDF) on Coloradoans and health care, excuse me, health insurance. Sen. Bennet seems to have remained an inscrutable non-entity when it comes to actual policy issues, but the DCC report provides at least a little insight, both into how Coloradoans feel about their coverage and reform efforts, and how the Denver Chamber thinks
While ignoring the 77% of respondents who believe they have “good or excellent” care, Lynn Bartels focuses on the 26% who have “skipped a recommended medical test, prescription, treatment in the past 12 months for you or a family member due to cost.” But neither the Post‘s crack reporters nor the Chamber’s summary addresses either double-counting (a “yes” counts for either the husband or the wife), or the seriousness of the treatment foregone. Consider four families of four, 16 people in all, and one person questioned in each. If only one person out of the 16 has foregone care, the result of this question will show a 25% positive, even though only 6% of the people covered by the question actually did without.
Sen. Bennet did, apparently, show some Doomsday slides about the wreck our economy and personal finances become if costs continue to rise at current rates. Naturally, the idea that individuals, deciding not to pay for certain procedures, or to negotiate down the prices, might actually help bring about cost control, has never entered his mind. To that extent, the decision of some people to do without rather than pay the insurance- and government-subsidized prices, which are largely fictional in any case, is a feature of what reform should look like, not a bug.
The other striking point is that while the Chamber opposes mandates for its members, it’s ok requiring an individual mandate. The larger business members that compose the Chamber have always been good at externalizing costs.
One question: when will the Post get around to linking to original source material when it’s available online? They almost never do this, for some reason.
Cash for Clunkers: Cooked Books for Domestic Manufacturers?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Economics on August 31st, 2009
It won’t come as any surprise to readers that I’m not exactly a fan of Cash for Clunkers. All this $3,000,000,000 Chinese borrowing program did was push forward some demand. If car dealers are going to permanently reduce their months of inventory, that’s all to the good, but it’s hard to see how C4C did anything other than hasten the process a little. (If they’re not, then it did even less good.) The environmental effects are minuscule, given the size of the US auto fleet and the small per-unit increase in mileage. And many dealers ended up pulling out of the program because the interest-free loans they were floating to the feds (with the notable exception of government-owned GM), were putting them in a cash crunch. As reimbursement trickles in, they’ll see sales drop back to lower-then-previous levels, and there’s no particular reason to think the dealers will be better off for having moved revenue from one quarter to another. In the meantime, it’s taken a large chunk of older cars and their replacement parts off the market, hurting most those who need cheap local transportation, the working poor.
However, there’s one complaint that isn’t particularly valid: that most of the cars bought were Japanese models, and that this hurts the domestic manufacturers. According to the final numbers, the Big 3 ended up with about 38% of the cars sold. But of the biggest foreign sellers, many are either made or assembled here in the US. The Toyota Corolla had a US-made engine and was assembled in the company’s Fremont, Calif. plant. At least, until they decided to shutter the place late last week. Honda Civic sedans also have US engines and are assembled in Indiana. The Camry has both US transmissions and engines, and is assembled locally (not so the hybrid, which is only assembled here). The Accord has both local engines and transmissions, and is assembled in Ohio. Presumably parts for all of those models are also produced domestically.
The Fit, Elantra, Versa, and Prius, seem to be produced exclusively overseas, but those are also down the list.
So while union shops may have a lot to complain about (especially since the doomed Fremont plant is the only union shop among the foreign-owned group), it’s not clear that US shops have really suffered here. If conservatives are going to promote free trade on the grounds that non-union foreign plants also employ people, we need to be honest enough to recognize when they benefit from ill-conceived government programs, too.
Still, the political power of pitting domestic vs. foreign cars is undeniable, which makes these numbers interesting. As of August 4, according to the LA Times and “numbers floating around Capitol Hill,” almost half the 157,000 cars sold had been from the Big 3. Two weeks and $2,000,000,000 later, an additional 533,000 cars had been sold, 2/3 of which were from foreign producers. It’s unclear what the source of the original numbers was – the LA Times doesn’t give one – but I’m extremely skeptical that first-week buyers were so radically different from 2nd- and 3rd-week buyers. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all to hear that some “creative estimating” was done in order to boost the apparent benefit of the program to domestic manufacturers.
Denver Post and Those Darned Think Tanks
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Uncategorized on August 30th, 2009
I know it’s accepted by now that the MSM group will label any conservative group, “conservative,” any libertarian group, “conservative,” and any liberal group, “left-leaning” or “centrist,” when they bother to label them at all. But when a new one comes along, it’s good to put both that group’s leanings, and the MSM’s failure to note them, on the record.
The Denver Post recently ran a story about small business’s internal divide over health care “reform.” In it, this:
Despite those fears, a study from the nonprofit Small Business Majority found health reform, even with a mandate, would save small business more than $500 billion over the next decade.
“Should everybody be in?” asked Elisabeth Arenales, an analyst with the Colorado Center on Law and Policy. “What’s the contribution of the business sector? Businesses stand to gain a lot from health-insurance reform.”
The CCLP may be talking about small business, but that doesn’t mean it’s speaking for small business. Far from it.
As for the Small Business Majority, it’s definitely a “left-leaning” advocacy group, with a pretty typical pedigree for such recent endeavors. Founded by a liberal Silicon Valley dot-com boomer, (he’s given exclusively to Democrats and Democrat causes), the group boasts that it, “works with the White House to organize policy discussions that focus on small business issues.” It’s an advocate of greater government involvement in health care, and appears to have been founded specifically in order to promote that goal. It examines reform proposals, but only those that increase government involvement.
There’s nothing necessarily the matter with this. Most groups claim to be “unbiased.” But only a biased paper would accept such claims at face value.
Rangel Should Go
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on August 30th, 2009
In case you’ve been too busy watching Obamacare implode like the latter stages of a supernova, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel has a little integrity problem. He has a problem reporting his income and assets – and thus his tax liability. He’s had to file amended disclosures on a number of occasions, with excuses that would have gotten you or me a trip to the slammer with a detour through bankruptcy court. He has a problem remembering which house he’s living in. He has a problem taking free vacations from cronies. He has no problem taking taxpayer-funded trips to the Caribbean. All of which has earned him what must be a record for Ethics Committee investigations into a sitting chairman. Despite which, the Democrat leadership re-appointed him to the chairmanship.
This is all from the guy who’s responsible for writing – although if he’s anything like the rest of his fellow committee chairmen, not reading – changes to the tax law. It’s not original to point out that there’s apparently one set of rules for you and me, and another set of rules for the people who write them.
It’s time for Charles Rangel to go, and at least until January 2011, it’s up to his fellow Democrats to do it. There is a process for removing errant committee chairmen. Each party caucus has a committee whose job it is to recommend to the entire caucus committee assignments and chairmanships. The Democrats’ is called the “Steering and Policy Committee,” although in their case, it appears that the policy is to let the steering take care of itself, with predictable results for the guardrails.
Our own Rep. DeGette, as a Chief Deputy Whip, is a member of this committee. How did she vote on Rangel’s re-appointment, and when will she move to undo that mistake?
Senator Bennet: “Fleeing From Colorado Families Tour”
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, Senate 2010 on August 27th, 2009
100 tickets are available. Details, and the sign-up form for Sen. Bennett’s Health Care Lottery here: http://bennet.senate.gov/eventtickets
(We can only hope it works better than the Health Care Lottery the Democrats have in mind.)
Senator Bennet has been running from Front Range voters during the August recess. During his “Fleeing from Colorado Families Tour,” he scheduled only one event in Denver, an invitation-only discussion at Denver Health. (Photos here: http://bennet.senate.gov/about/updates/) You can see about a dozen doctors and nurses in the photo.
I can’t blame him for spending the summer in the high country and the western slope. If I didn’t have to work for a living, that’s where I’d be, too. But while I recognize the importance of including the entirety of our state in this debate, Sen. Bennet’s scarcity to most of Colorado’s population speaks volumes about his lack of confidence in the proposals he appears ready to embrace.
For most Coloradoans, this may be the only chance they get to confront their selected official on this issue. Let’s make the most of it.
To Whom It May Concern
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics on August 25th, 2009
Stay out. Just stay out for a while.
Now, it looks as though the NRSC isn’t getting involved in our Senate primary after all. At least not for now. I spoke with Dick Wadhams yesterday and he said that he hadn’t seen any indications that the NRSC was getting ready to jump in. They do usually coordinate this sort of thing with the state party chairman in question, and he hadn’t heard anything. He repeated his adamant position that he isn’t taking sides, and that he trusts the process to sort out the best candidates for the party.
That said, it’s not as though the NRSC hasn’t pulled stunts like this in the past. And to be sure, that Pennsylvania seat is the reason the Dems are still one vote shy of 60 in the Senate. Oh, wait. Never mind. Well, it’d be even worse without Lincoln Chaffee up there in Rhode Island to..what’s that? Wow. Still, you have to admit, favored candidate Charlie Crist did himself some good today…then again.
There’s no secret that the NRSC, looking from a great distance, doesn’t have great confidence in the declared field thus far. And there’s no secret that Jane Norton will be a dynamite fundraiser for herself, especially from out of state, leaving the NRSC free to deploy money elsewhere.
But the NRSC’s involvement most resembles the conservative theory of arms control: where it’s needed, it’s not effective, and where it’s effective, it’s not needed. Mrs. Norton is far from a sure thing as a campaigner; she’s never won office on her own, becoming Lt. Governor as part of the Bill Owens steamroller in 2002.
I can’t actually endorse boycotts of Republican organizations, but it stuff like this, as well as rumors that the NRSC is trying to knock Pat Toomey off in a primary, that encourage Republicans to withhold their money from the NRSC.
And Hugh. What’s with CD-4? With the exception of a certain state house race with the credibility of the party at stake – we don’t forget our friends – you’ve not exactly had a sterling record in picking winners here. I know you and Tom Lucero are friends, but Cory Gardner’s a fine candidate up there, and Congress is a logical step up for a state legislator. Your involvement here is somewhat less problematic than the NRSC’s meddling, since you’re not part of the official party hierarchy, but I’m really not sure you’re making the right call up there, and in a situation with two credible candidate, shouldn’t this sort of thing be left to the citizens?
When I ran last year, it was often frustrating both for me and for party officials to have to keep their mouths shut about my primary. But I emerged as a better candidate, and one with more credibility, for having won without the state party or the county party getting officially involved. Now, as one of those party officials, I can tell you that having someone come in from out of state and bigfoot the people here on the ground doing the work is not only annoying, it’s insulting.
When we have a nominee or a clear front-runner, feel free to come on in. But until then, how about letting Coloradoans sort out Colorado’s representation?
Home and Away
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Labor on August 25th, 2009
With mlb.com’s radio subscription, I find that I enjoy listening to the opponents’ broadcasts, not just for the variety, but also because I’ve never really warmed to the local guys here in Denver. I guess I’ve been spoiled by Jon Miller and Joe Angel all those years for the Orioles. I always liked Charlie Steiner at ESPN, and have kind of missed him since he left to go do the Bums games.
In any case, on tonight’s KABC broadcast for the Dodgers, the LA Federation of Labor was running pro-union ads, not only boosting “union jobs,” but also putting pressure on Diane Feinstein to vote for the Employee Forced Collectivization Act. The spot claimed that it would make it easier for workers to unionize, which is indisputably true, although it would be more accurate to say that it would make it easier for unions to force workers into unions.
Still, it’s an interesting place to be advertising. The Los Angeles Dodgers have never really had an image as a blue-collar team, unlike the Brooklyn Dodgers. So it’s unclear how much of their target audience the Lords of Labor are reaching with these spots.
How ‘Bout Them Rockies?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Baseball on August 25th, 2009
I should know by now. After the Giants put two across in the top of the 14th, I turned off the broadcast. It had been a nice game, but the Rocks had more or less tossed it away earlier on Tulowitzski’s baserunning error, and their inability to make anything of all their men on third. That had made it 3-1, and I figured I needed to concentrate on the County website.
So naturally, when I go to check the scores, they’ve won 6-4. Instead of being back where they started when the Giants came into town, they’ve opened up a 4 game lead for the Wild Card, and closed to within 3 of the Dodgers. The Dodgers, by the way, are in town for a 3-game set starting tomorrow night, so it’s possible – although extraordinarily unlikely – that the Rockies could be tied for first by the weekend, and playing for home field in the NL playoffs. They have played close to .700 ball since the beginning of June, come back from almost dead last in the league (the Nationals have had that pinned down since early April), and are now seriously thinking about playing in October again.
Apparently, the Colorado Rockies are simply a force of nature.
-
You are currently browsing the archives.
