Across the Great Divide

Paranoid's Digest.

When it comes to coal-fired power plants, cleaner air means something else gets dirtier. Nearly one-third of the nation’s electricity is produced in states that exempt coal combustion wastes from some or all solid waste regulations.

But because every pound of pollution kept out of the air ends up in the solid waste stream, the pollution control methods in the stacks only made the problem on the ground worse. The solid waste consists of fine and dusty flyash, a gravelly, gray material called bottom ash, and the relatively benign glassy clinkers or boiler slag. The stack scrubbers that pull sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide out of the smoke create perhaps the most malignant material, called scrubber sludge. All of that was typically piled up near the plant, where it could blow into the air, or get washed into an arroyo, or leach into the ground.

— "Coal's other mess," High Country News

*****

Ever wonder why the Republicans have such a problem with Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's mailing lists? Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, has been studying the history of fascist shifts and does not like what she's seeing in America.

Americans have this very wrong idea about what a closed society looks like. Many despots make it a point to try to hold the elections, but they're corrupted elections. Corrupted elections take place all over the world in closed societies. Ninety-nine percent of Austrians voted yes for the annexation by Germany, because the SA were standing outside the voting booths, intimidating the voters and people counting the vote. So you can mess with the process.

*****
At least fascists of old had to rely on informants or send a thug to follow you around. Today, the E911 data from a cell phone carried by a target can allow it to be located to within about 30 feet.

But the Washington Post says the secret warrants required for criminal surveillance are being granted without probable cause.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

"Law enforcement has absolutely no interest in tracking the locations of law-abiding citizens. None whatsoever," [Justice Department spokesman Dean] Boyd said. "What we're doing is   going through the courts to lawfully obtain data that will help us locate criminal targets, sometimes in cases where lives are literally hanging in the balance, such as a child abduction or serial murderer on the loose."

Which sounds remarkably like the arguments for waterboarding.

*****

As we head toward the year-end, it's time for the Department of Revenue to send a few warning shots over the heads of taxpayers.

According to a news release, Keith Dean Johnson and Shirley Mae Johnson of Shoreview face charges for allegedly claiming residency in South Dakota to avoid paying income taxes in Minnesota. Johnson claimed he and his wife have been South Dakota residents since November 1998, but tax records from Ramsey County show the Johnsons as owners of a property in Shoreview that has been receiving homestead residential classification since 1992.

According to the Johnson's federal returns, the couple had income between the years 2001 and
2006 exceeding $1 million.

Under the "183-day rule," spending more than six months in Minnesota and maintaining a residence in the state requires filing a Minnesota individual income tax return.

Campaign Finance: The Rich vs. the Richer.

George Will and I have at least one thing in common. We don't hate people for being millionaires.

But after that, our similarities get murky.

Take the latest installment in Will's crusade to defeat attempts at campaign finance reform, for example. He argues that:

• Money is speech and ought not to be restricted
• The rationale for reform was to reduce corruption
• Self-financed candidates are by definition beyond corruption
• Rules to limit campaign spending are a gambit to protect incumbents (presumably against the pure millionaires who only want the best for their constituents and the country).

It's hard to tell from the evidence at hand whether Will's claim about incumbents keeping out rich candidates is correct, but from what I see, he must mean that rich incumbents are trying to keep out even richer ones.

Open Secrets lists the reported net worth of the top 25 members of the Senate in 2005, and the lowest ranking Senator is worth between $2.5 and $9.2 million. In the House, the number 25 spot is good for between $ 6.3 and $16.7 million.

This article from 2004 says one in three Senators is a millionaire and 123 House members, or better than one-fourth, "earned" one million in the previous year [which I take to mean they had that much in net worth].

Without going through all the financial disclosure reports myself, I'm going out on a limb and declaring that the proportion of millionaires in Congress is likely higher than in any other organization in the country, excepting perhaps certain investment banking firms. And it is certainly far out of whack with the nation as a whole.

In comparison, the criminal population in Congress is probably no worse than the rest of the country's.

The issue for me is neither wealth, nor free speech nor potential corruption — which Will says arises from quid pro quo arrangements connecting contributions with particular actions. It's how wealth connects a person to certain interests and detaches them from other concerns — and whether we want the nation run by a concentration of people whose experience is so remote from the average citizen's.

Is it reasonable to think that men who've made personal fortunes in energy, defense contracting or investment banking might have a wee favorable disposition toward those industries without benefit of direct bribery?

We don't need to fear the outright crooks in Congress or the Bush Administration, where wealthy folks are also well-represented. Anyone willing to take a bribe in exchange for influencing legislation is clearly a loser, with limited pull.

It's the further entrenchment of oligarchy we should seek to limit. And if George Will truly can't see that, then perhaps it's because he's spending too much time delivering his free speech apologetics to that very crowd.

Will, who reportedly took $12,500 for speaking engagements in 1994, is now, like lobster, priced off the menu. 

Building for the Ages.

The Moors built this castle atop two hills overlooking the city of Sintra, Portugal, some time around 800 AD. It was taken by the Christian Dom Afonso Henriques in 1147 and received a few renovations over the centuries, most notably in the 1860s, when King Consort Fernando of Saxe Coburg-Gotha forested the area.

By my calculations, this old Muslim fort has held up for between seven and 60 times longer than the Bunkle, LA, Wal-Mart.

[Wal-Mart photo from John Wise.]

Beware of Strangers Bearing Giftization.

In today's Star Tribune, John Semmens makes another argument for privatizing public highways:

In the face of this mounting evidence that the roadway asset is decaying, Congress earmarked $24 billion for pork-barrel road projects in the most recent highway funding bill. This included the notorious $233 million "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska.

Why does this kind of nonsense persist? Because the government owns the roads. This means that rather than being managed using sound investment judgment, roads are managed by a bureaucracy toiling under the mandates of politically determined priorities.

Yesterday, Paul Krugman reminded us that government has no monopoly on the other white meat, especially when it involves "investment judgment":

Around 25 years ago, American business — and the American political system — bought into the idea that greed is good. Executives are lavishly rewarded if the companies they run seem successful: last year the chief executives of Merrill and Citigroup were paid $48 million and $25.6 million, respectively.

But if the success turns out to have been an illusion — well, they still get to keep the money. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Not only is this grossly unfair, it encourages bad risk-taking, and sometimes fraud. If an executive can create the appearance of success, even for a couple of years, he will walk away immensely wealthy. Meanwhile, the subsequent revelation that appearances were deceiving is someone else’s problem.

Krugman wildly understates the pork dispensed even during the early stages of the mortgage meltdown, when it was being treated like global warming — as an inconvenient trope that had to be banished from the public mind so we could continue to enjoy a booming economy.

The CEOs took home big bonuses year after year (Merrill's CEO netted $32.5 million for 2000, for example), and the payouts went to more than the top dogs. In 2006, Merrill paid out $17 billion in compensation and benefits — half its $34 billion in net revenues.

Outlandish compensation may not be an issue on Wall Street, but it might raise a few hackles when the money generated by formerly public assets starts flowing into second yachts and fifth vacation homes.

Make no mistake, private ownership of highways will be a financial play, and the players will be the same short-term focused investment executives, fund managers, bondholders and analysts who rode the mortgage gravy train. The deals they sign may be for 99 years, and the contracts may call for maintenance and expansion, but the timetables of the boys inking the paper will be based more on how fast they can sell it.

Semmens sees the investors differently:

 

Privatizing roadways would help overcome the most egregious problems of the current system. Private investors need to recover their costs in order to stay in business. Undercharging some customers and neglecting maintenance are chronic and inherent when the government runs things. They are rare news items when private firms run things.

Do you really think the New York minds that brought you all manner of tranches and other mortgage securitization innovations are going to roll over and play patsy for a few bumpkin Minnesota legislators and a transportation commissioner? They'll be nowhere around when the infrastructure starts to crumble.

Taxpayers may not appreciate regulators, bureaucracy and public employee unions, but it's wishful thinking to imagine they'll have greater leverage over the new owners.

There's no doubt our highway financing system needs some changes, and private industry could have a positive role to play. But beware of people slinging around nouns that end in "-itization."

I know, because I used to do it for those guys myself.

How Ever Did We Get Along Without Developers?

Oh, sure, there were probably Jerry Trooiens back in the day and across the Atlantic. And when you get up close, now there's a bit of seediness.

But millions of people come here to drink port, cross the bridges and walk a human-scale city.

And it's not the free parking that brings them.

Roberts Answers the Call.

Richard Roberts, son of evangelist Oral Roberts, has resigned as president of Oral Roberts University. His stepping down follows the usual accusations about lavish lifestyle and imperious management practices.

But remember folks, it's just a l'il family bidness.

Richard prepared for his university career by singing and signing letters sent out to raise $4.5 million so that God would not call his daddy home prematurely.

He and first wife Patti performed as a gospel duo, including this appearance with Robert Goulet on an Oral Roberts holiday broadcast.

In recent years, as you can see from the Tulsa World photo, Richard appears to have contracted the orange hair malady that mysteriously afflicts vain and  prosperous gentlemen along about age 60.

 

Googling the Moon.

Didn't have a camera to catch the full moon ring tonight over Lake Michigan. This is merely a very rough approximation.

The observers had a collective 300 or so years on the earth and none of us had seen this sort of ring around the moon, though it apparently isn't that uncommon.

Ancient people, of course, had to come up with other explanations. Thanks to  astroscience and google, I expect no virgins will have to be sacrificed in the morning.

Simply Beautiful.

Biking through small Portuguese towns, it was hard to miss how modest touches created beauty and individuality  out of the mundane.

A Bilking Waster Sincerely Wants to Know.

Liberalism (or Progressivism as they now want to call it) can only lead us down one path and that is to the welfare state, wasting our money and bilking working Americans out of their hard earned money, while continuing to fail to educate our children [sic] the basic tools they need to succeed in life.
– "The Liberal Mindset," Kowabunga

One of the useful insights I got from sitting down with a small group of conservative bloggers was that we were all suspicious of bigness. But conservatives were more likely to see the problem as big government, while progressives distrusted big corporations.

The blogger quoted above is approving an op/ed by the Taxpayers League's Michael Wigley that purports to tell us what liberals really think. The Wigley piece exhibits the usual sophistry of pulling quotes out of context and deliberately misunderstanding them.

It's tempting to treat similarly the attitude expressed here:

Wigley also points out that the more layers of government involved, the greater the amount of bureaucracy and the less the money will actually buy. This is true whether we are talking education (public schools), welfare, social security, or nationalizing health care. The more layers of that [sic] is government involved, the less you get and the lower your return on your dollar, and the greater the amount of government waste there will be.

Does the bureaucratic principle apply only to government? Are the benefits of scale only allowed private industry? Does the author shop at mom and pop stores because they are more efficient and provide better value than big box retailers?

The truth, I believe, lies not in the extreme imaginings of Wigley and Kowabunga, but somewhere in between.

 

What Would Jesus Develop?

The New York Times continues its "In God's Name" series with an article on the roles megachurches are playing in local economies.

An analysis by The New York Times of the online public records of just over 1,300 of these giant churches shows that their business interests are as varied as basketball schools, aviation subsidiaries, investment partnerships and a limousine service.

Our local Living Word Christian Center has its share of side ventures and real estate success, but doesn't make the Times story, which describes how evangelical investment is  stimulating suburban economic development  and creating murky issues for the tax authorities.