The Angels Want to Wear His Red Shoes

The Pope, in DC today, wore traditional Catholic garb. But what is up with his red Prada shoes? That is a pretty sexy and daring fashion statement for a Pope who veers traditional and is fire and brimstone about anything having to do with sex.

Did Jesus wear Prada?

Maybe everyone living in Italy, including the Pope, is more sexy than the run of the mill American.

Another SF Dispatch

I just got back from SF this morning after being delayed by stormy weather and general airport dysfunction due to the FAA suddenly deciding that they need to actually do something.

I love to report on SF as it is at once the most tolerant the most intolerant city in the US.

I was at the Olympic torch protest and was hoping it would escalate as I wanted to throw a brick through a window but, alas, there was no riot.

But I do have a good smoking story to tell. I was exiled into the freezing wind outside my hotel where I met a fellow smoker. He invited me into the Irish bar next door and bought me Guinness. Two guys there also liked me so the smoker went at them fists flying and chairs breaking. That is what I call a good old-school good time fight. So even in San Francisco men love to crack each others' heads.

Limousine Liberals

There is a segment of society that makes so much money they don't care about marginal tax rates and they tend to advocate confiscatory taxes on those who make $150K or more, which in high-cost locations like NYC make those earners middle-class. The Clintons are part of that elite, as they reported income for the years 2000 to 2006 of $109 million. If you make that much money, then tax rates are irrelevant.

Then there are the rest of us, including small business owners and those of us who live on the Coasts, where expenses are really high and $150K does not deem one "rich."

The Clintons paid about 31% in taxes. The top federal rate is 35% and self-employed people like me pay an additiona 6.5%. Hillary proposes to raise the top rate to 39.5%. All-in I pay about 55%. Is that good for the country? No, as I cannot afford to hire anyone as a majority of my earnings go toward paying taxes.

Hillary Clinton, who espouses socialist programs for the US and rails against the "rich," is making $20MM a year. When you make that much money you don't care about taxes as you have more money than you ever can spend, and have lifetime security. When you are a small business struggling to make it and contemplating a hire you really do care, and tax rates really do matter.

The Coming Crisis in Student Loans

The private market in student loans has played a critical role in financing higher education for millions of Americans. For an undergraduate, the maximum federal loan is $3,500 per year. The private loan market made up the difference between the $3,500 and tuition, which could be $40K. With the private loan market dead, expect headlines in August about this issue.

Yet, in perfectly bad timing, Congress passed and Bush signed on 9/27/07 the ironically named College Cost Reduction Act.It took away subsidies for student loans generated by private lenders. The market reaction has been fierce and does not help students. The biggest lenders-- Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo et al-- have dropped out of the market completely. The DOE keeps repeating its mantra that 2,000 banks provide private student loans, (and I was surprised at the sloppy WSJ reporting that repeated that lie) but my interviews with actors in the sector say that it is closer to 30 and dropping quickly. The DOE counts every firm that ever registered and the leadership there is in spin mode about having a hand in the coming crisis that they caused. They are also trying to get new jobs before the administration changes hands so no one is focusing on anything except their resumes.

Mark my words: August will = headlines about the student loan crisis. The sad thing is that the government sees it coming but will do nothing about it.

SF Dispatch

I just got back from SF and that city is fascinating because it is on the cutting edge of many personal freedoms but it also so Nanny-State. The city recently mandated that every company with more than 20 employees provide health insurance to their workers. This mandate hit restaurants very hard and they have responsded with a 4% charge to diners to cover that cost. It is part of your SF restaurant bill now.

I was hit with that 4% surcharge at every restaurant and applaud it for its honesty and showing the customer how government mandates on small businesses cost customers more.

Should Sex Offenders Not Be Eligible for Student Aid?

Rep. Ric Keller (R) of Florida thinks most definitely that they should not.

''This is the most insane waste of taxpayer money that I have seen in my eight years in Congress,'' said Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., who is pushing to stop the practice. ''It is a national embarrassment that we are wasting taxpayer dollars for pedophiles and rapists to take college courses while hardworking young people from lower-class families are flipping hamburgers to pay for college.''

[Fact check: federal student aid that goes to sex offenders has zero effect on what hamburger flippers or any other American can receive in aid; it is not a zero sum game and everyone is eligible.]

Rep. Keller has introduced a bill that would ban sex offenders from receiving Pell grants, which is the form of aid available to low-income students and is especially helpful to them because it is a grant, not a loan. People convicted of drug offenses are already banned from accessing student loans under similar punishment logic. Murderers are still free to seek government aid.

IMHO, a convicted criminal's pursuit of higher education is a good thing and not an outrage that should be banned de facto by denying student aid. What is the goal here? Permanent outcast status for sex and drug offenders or rehabilitation and a path to stability and re-entry into society?

The Hillary "Experience" Hoax

Hillary claims to have 35 years of public service experience. Simple math concludes that she is counting every year since she was 23 as being relevant, and simple common sense says that such claims are ridiculous.

At age 23, right after graduating from Yale Law School, Hillary failed the DC Bar exam. After that, she revisited Bill's overtures and moved to Arkansas to be with him. She then joined the Rose Law Firm and managed to pass the easy ARK bar exam. There she stayed while her husband became governor and did nothing political. So the 35 years of proclaimed experience need to be discounted by that time frame, which is 20 years. So Hill is now down to 15 years of experience.

Then Bill won the presidency. Perhaps this is where Hillary's "experience" began? She can take credit for being a part of the presidency but her current stance on NAFTA, a cornerstone of her husband's policy, completely contradicts her assertion that she was a major part of policy formation as she has made repealing NAFTA a cornerstone of her populist agenda. If she indeed had a say on NAFTA and is now vehemently opposed to it where was she when her husband was writing it into law?

I would love to see a woman president but this is not the right woman. As Sullivan rightly bemoaned, the Clinton campaign is The Horror Film That Never Ends.

Client #9 Was a Bully

My view of Eliot before this scandal was that he was a major aggressive asshole. He didn't only seek to prosecute individuals, he seeked to ruin them. He shook down Wall Street and never took a case to court and never won a single case in court but exacted fees so the firms could avoid indictment. He famously told the former head of highly respected Goldman Sachs, who dared to write an op-ed opposing his policies,

"I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter,"

This guy is a bad guy and I have total schadenfreude in his demise. His interference in capital markets firms, and his requirement that they separate investment banking from research has killed the US IPO market. Remember when the US had an IPO market? Well we don't anymore, thanks to Spitzer. The lack of an IPO market has significantly devalued most private companies, leading to a massive loss of wealth.

Eliot Spitzer Linked to Prostitution Ring

Oh this is rich. The New York governor, who used scorched Earth tactics as New York attorney general to terrorize Wall Street firms (he never won a case in court, they all settled out of fear) for his own political gains and to burnish his holy image, has been linked to a NY prostitution ring. The evidence against him must be pretty damning, as he has not tried to deny the allegations and is already talking about patching up his relations with his family.

In a short statement this afternoon, the Democratic governor apologized to his family and to the public but did not elaborate on his actions.

"I violated my obligation to my family and my own sense of right and wrong," he said in a one-minute statement with his wife by his side. "I must now dedicate time to regain the trust of my family

This is good news in a market that has mostly bad news. Spitzer revived the obscure Martin Act (a NY law) to circumvent federal banking law and harass companies that do business in New York so that he could build a crusader platform to win higher office. He was a nightmare thorn in the side to legitimate financial companies. I have glorious schadenfreude about this development.

Reason #2 to Hate Taxes

Reason #1 is that the income tax is a seizure of personal property that the Constitution banned and needed a Constitutional amendment to allow it.

Reason #2 is that politicians use the income and other taxes to promote their own goals or cater to special interests, picking winners and losers every time that they do so. Case in point:

Arlington, VA has enacted a big hybrid tax deduction that makes everyone who does not have a hybrid pay more, to fund the deduction.

The county, which is promoting a wide variety of green initiatives, last year introduced a special tax subsidy for people who bought "special clean fuel vehicles," which include most hybrids.

It gave owners a 100 percent rebate on personal property taxes, up to $20,000 in assessed value, for hybrid cars, giving some residents tax savings of more than $500.

Why this tax break is so ridiculous on its face is that citizens who take public transit or walk to work get zero tax breaks and are subsidizing Prius owners, who might be driving 100 miles or more back and forth every day, hauling down the HOV lane as they are allowed to because they have a tax-subsidized hybrid, and writing the whole thing off, both federally ($3,500)and locally while truly "green" Metro rides are left footing the bill.

Texas Court Overturns Sex Toy Ban

It is hard to believe that sex toys are illegal anywhere in the US but they were in Texas before this ruling and still are in Alabama, Mississippi and somewhat in Virginia.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by up to two years in jail, violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.

"Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct," the appeals judges wrote. "The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification after Lawrence."

Amen and thank you to Lambda Legal for funding, trying and winning Lawrence. Now Texan law enforcement can stop devoting resources to arresting housewives who host alternative Tupperware parties.

Why Do Clinton and Obama Hate NAFTA So Much?

The simple answer is that they are campaigning in Ohio, which is depressed and has lost a lot of jobs. So criticizing NAFTA makes them seem sympathetic to Ohio's plight and they hope to win votes with their position. Hillary's decrying of NAFTA is especially ironic as NAFTA was a big policy priority and accomplishment of her husband. Since Hillary counts her experience as First Lady as making her more qualified than Obama, this is relevant. Where was she when NAFTA was passed?

Facts need to be injected into the current debate about NAFTA. What exactly is the effect of NAFTA on Ohio? The WSJ today ran an op-ed full of facts that make the anti-NAFTA position look like a loser for Ohio.

Ohio workers would pay a heavy price for pulling out of Nafta. Canada and Mexico are the top two markets for exports from Ohio, accounting for more than half of the state's exports in 2006. According to the Ohio Department of Development, 283,500 workers in the state earn their living in the export sector, with machinery, car parts, aircraft engines and optical/medical equipment among the leading exports. A trade showdown would put those good-paying jobs at risk.

Since Nafta took effect on Jan. 1, 1994, the U.S. economy has added a net 26 million new jobs. The average real hourly compensation (wages and benefits) of workers has climbed 23%. Real median household net worth has increased by a third. Of course, Nafta was not the primary driver of all that good news. But it is a useful counterpoint to the sense that large numbers of Americans have been "devastated" by Nafta and other trade agreements.

Wine Store Recession Index

On New Year's eve I visited my wine store and the wine buyer was glum. Yes, people were buying bottles of wine and champagne but no one was buying cases anymore. The party era was over. He had called his peers throughout the District and they all reported a major slump, one that was the worst they could recall in their professional lives.

As a big wine purchaser (lush) the wine buyer used to walk me up the register and dictate major discounts for me. That is gone now too and I pay retail.

Wine stores are the canary in the coal mine about the economy, and the canary died.

Traffic Cameras and the Slippery Slope

Speed and red light cameras were installed a few years ago in DC with little public outcry. One of the intersections that red light running cameras were installed at, Nebraska and Connecticut, had seen four deaths in as many years due to red light runners slamming into cars. Libertarian me did not even protest that camera as I had a very scary experience when a huge dumptruck going about 50 at that same intersection ran a red light and would have killed me had I not noticed it coming and wildly acclerated to avoid it.

But those cameras do start a slippery slope of government. Marc Fisher in the Wa Post reports today:

In Britain, the global leader in official surveillance of public spaces, the latest generation of digital speed cameras produces photos that reveal when drivers are eating, smoking or using hand-held cellphones -- all no-nos in Mother England.

Are we still so happy with speed cameras?

The UK is ahead of the US both in terms of surveillance technology and the evolution of the Nanny State. Does anyone doubt that the government will, like the UK, start using those cameras for more invasive monitoring of drivers?

Majority Rules: How Politicians Do Not Understand Democracy

Today's Kojo Nnamdi show on NPR debated three bills pending in Maryland that affect marriage. The show's title was "Government and the Meaning of Marriage."

What most struck me about the debate was Maryland State Senator Janet Greenip's incorrect definition of a democracy as she pushed her referendum bill. I have employed my best memory recall as I did not want to pay the $30 transcript bill to get the actual dialog but here is my best effort:

Kojo: Many people think that a simple majority vote results in the tyranny of the minority. How do you respond to that?

Greenip: Well, we live in a republic, and that means that the majority absolutely should make the decisions.

Actually, Ms Greenip, you have no understanding about either a republic or democracy. Neither is a simple majoritarian vote. We have first of all a Constitution, which gives every individual rights that cannot be negated on a majority vote. Next, we have the balance of powers that include the judiciary. No matter what anyone thinks about marriage this women ought to be thrown out of elected office.

The Wa Post's Misguided "Faith" Page

After the 2004 elections in which Evangelicals were widely viewed to be the "swing" vote, the Wa Post started a regular religion feature in its Metro section, devoting an entire page to "Faith" concerns.

[BTW when did religion become faith? I object to the latter term, as it connotes that those who are not religious are lacking something.]

Today's WP "faith" page is typical of the quality of its writing as it ponders the question of whether or not Obama is the Messiah.

Is Obama the Messiah? People are asking these days and it's not so hard to understand why: the desperate throngs, the tears, the great awakening of a slumbering demographic. All that larger symbolism.

The emotional landscape of many American voters is calamitous of late -- frightened by our Babylonian war, unhappy with our President and depressed by the cleansing crush of the credit crunch -- so it's not surprising that the coming presidential election would take on a certain biblical coloring.

The Messiah question is a loud one coming from all corners. Even a blogger for Mother Jones, the hot heart of the far left, worries that the Obama-passion will be used for nefarious purposes by right-wingers, he himself writes "Barack Obama has a messiah complex and no one will convince me otherwise."

Don Graham, would your mother ever have approved of publishing something like that?

How Hillary's Mortgage Plan Is All Wrong

Hillary Clinton is proposing that on "Day One" when she is president she will freeze foreclosures for 90 days and freeze interest rates on mortgages.

Such "freezing" breaks one of the most important assumptions that underlie American prosperity: the enforceability of contracts. Re: the subprime debacle, lenders lent money to lendees at below-market interest rates knowing that they would either: a) get their money back at higher rates in futures years, or 2) the lendee would pay a penalty for getting out of the loan early and make the lender whole. Government mandated re-setting of terms for mortgage contracts would mark a new low for interference, be unconstitutional, and would likely result in higher costs for all home buyers as lenders need to compensate for their loss of contract enforcement.

Slate's take on this here.

Corporate Lawsuit King is Going to Jail

Bill Lerach made tens of millions of dollars suing companies whose stock fell, simply because the stock fell. He would sue the company on behalf of stockholders and pocket 30% of the judgement. Back in 1996 Wired called him a "Bloodsucking scumbag."

Lerach terrorized and sued high tech companies to the point that they raised $15MM to defend suits against him. Every person who thinks that tech companies devoting such capital is a poor investment can take solace in the fact that he is going to jail for two years.

Authorities said Mr. Lerach's former firm, now known as Milberg Weiss, made an estimated $250 million over two decades by filing legal actions on behalf of professional plaintiffs who received kickbacks...

Prosecutors said the firm, previously known as Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, paid $11.3 million in kickbacks to people who became plaintiffs in lawsuits targeting companies such as AT&T, Lucent, WorldCom, Microsoft and Prudential Insurance. Seven people, including Mr. Lerach and two other former partners, have pleaded guilty in the case.

Dispatch from the USVI, an Unregulated Paradise

I recently spent a short week in St John, USVI. Aside from its pristine beaches and natural beauty, it was fun to be in a place that regulation has bypassed, despite it being a US territory or possession, I don't know which. The US regulatory juggernaut has overlooked this little island. And no one is getting killed due to the lack of regulation. They are just having fun. I did not see any bodies in the roadway.

Some of the fun features of the USVI that would be outlawed in the US:

-- Taxicabs are low-end Ford pickups with rows of seats in the 4 by 4. They are open air and do not have seat belts and you slide around as they take the hills. But a taxi ride is typically $5 and it is fun to be in the open air in that great weather.

-- You can smoke anywhere, if you care to do that. There is no smoking ban. I noticed that people were respectful of not smoking around eaters and would retreat to the bar for a smoke. The market does work!

-- There is no law banning having an open bottle in the car. You can bring your rum punch into the open air taxi and smoke to boot. You can also drink a beer while driving. That makes sense to me. Drunk driving is one thing, but how is it not a crime to have a couple of drinks and then drive while it is a crime to have a beer in the jeep when one is not anywhere near intoxicated?

The USVI reminds me of the freedoms that we had until the 80s, when the baby boomers decided to become Nanny Staters.

Archbishop is Criticized for His Support of Sharia Law in the UK

It is a good thing that common law still is in effect in the UK, at least for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury who supports the enaction of Sharia law in the UK. That is because under Sharia law the Archbishop of Canterbury would surely be put to death by stoning under its authority as he is as apostate. Thank goodness his own church has come out against him.

The picture above shows Sharia law in practice. Most of the victims are women who are accused of infractions such as being somewhere without being accompanied by a male relative. Being in public with someone who is not your husband or relative is considered adultery and will be punished by stoning.

It is almost all women who are stoned, as hyper male Muslim societies focus all of their anger and punishment on women. The woman is buried to her chest and then pelted with rocks until she is dead.

Rowan Williams, you do not deserve to live in the West if you would allow Sharia barbarism to exist in any way in the UK.

Archbishop of Canterbury: Sharia Law is "Inevitable."

In the saddest sign that the British have given up their culture totally, the brilliant culture that produced the Magna Carta has given way to Islamic barbarism. The Archbishop of Canterbury declared the inevitability of Sharia law in the UK and dismissed the horrible effects that Sharia law has on women.

"This may include aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions, and authorised structures of mediation and conflict resolution."

The archbishop attempted to distance himself from the extreme legal systems run in Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, where adultery can be punished by death and women who behave independently risk harsh punishments.

Does the Archbishop of Canterbury understand the harsh treatment of women under sharia?

New Studies Suggest that Biofuels Create Much More Carbon Than Oil/Gas

While Congress keeps increasing its biofuel mandates, scientific evidence is emerging that proports that biofuels are an environmental disaster and make oil look as innocuous as solar panels in comparison.

From the WSJ today:

A study published in the latest issue of Science finds that corn-based ethanol, a type of biofuel pushed heavily in the U.S., will nearly double the output of greenhouse-gas emissions instead of reducing them by about one-fifth by some estimates. A separate paper in Science concludes that clearing native habitats to grow crops for biofuel generally will lead to more carbon emissions.

Some earlier studies didn't account for one hard-to-measure factor: the decision by farmers world-wide to convert forest and grasslands to grow feedstock for the new biofuels.

Such land-use changes can have big and unintended consequences, such as food shortages and reduced biodiversity. For example, when forests or grasslands are converted for agricultural use, it leads to a large, quick release of carbon when the existing plant life is destroyed and the soil is tilled. Even if biofuels are grown on cropland previously used to grow food, farmers tend to then clear other forests and grasslands and grow the food elsewhere.

"Even if we're dramatically wrong, it's hard to get to a result that says you get a benefit over 50 years," said Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University and a co-author of the paper on corn-based ethanol.

Way to go Congress for mandating a worse ecological disaster to replace the optional one. This issue alone makes me fervently support a national primary so that corn-growing Iowa loses its disproportional influence on US policy.

The Fed Job Gravy Train

If you live in DC like I do you know that your friends employed by the US government unlike you leave work promptly at 5, get amazing health benefits, can have every other Friday off if they work 10-hour days and are looking forward to generous pensions and lifetime health insurance at the young age of 52.

What you might not know is that they are also earning 50% more than the average private sector worker. Traditionally, government jobs paid poorly and made up for it with benefits and security. They still have the benefits and security, but are also making a ton of money at the expense of taxpayers who foot the bill to afford government employees a lifetime of security that most taxpayers do not have plus huge annual salaries to boot.

Is Eli Manning All of the Sudden Hot?

Just about every female would conclude that the picture to the left shows that Eli is indeed hot. Long legs in blue jeans with a slim waist and a big leather belt to accentuate it go a long way in the American female imagination.

Sally Jenkins in the Wa Post today opined on Eli's looks:

Maybe it was an illusion, but did Eli Manning's face get leaner, and his back straighter overnight? On the morning after the Super Bowl, he stood at a podium to accept his most valuable player award, somehow older in a dark suit with a white handkerchief peeking from his pocket. When Manning won the game of his life over the New England Patriots, he lost something else: his baby fat.

Manning is not capitalizing on his fame by dating a super model as he is engaged to a normal person whom he has been dating since his college years. So there will be no Yoko Romo to curse the Jints going forward.

Is There a Vixen Curse in Football?

Tony Romo has twice screwed up in critical games when he had an uber vixen girlfriend in the stands. Jessica Simpson is now known as Yoko Romo.

The Pats' Tom Brady, despite dating supermodel Gisele Bundchen, avoided that problem as Gisele was not seen during the playoffs or in any regular season games. But then she appeared during the Super Bowl, in a luxury suite just like Jessica did, and the Pats lost their first and most important game of the season.

The minute I saw her in the stands I knew that the Jints were going to win.

More here on ABC's take on the "hottie jinx."

Middle School Bans "Intentional" Farting

For adults, farting is something that we desperately try to contain and make private. This story brought me back to grammer school, when boys had the magical ability to produce farts upon demand and aim them at the people they disliked.

But it is doomsday for those "intentional" farts in Camden, ME, as they have banned it.

The joke's on the boys as the penalty for "intentional farting" is now a detention.

"Strange, but true, thanks to a bunch of 8th grade boys, intentional farting has been banned from CRMS," the newsletter said. "It started out as a funny joke and eventually turned into a game. This is the first rule at CRMS that prevents the use of natural bodily functions. The penalty for intentional farting is a detention, so keep it to yourself!"

Mississippi Pols Seek to Ban Restaurants from Serving Obese Patrons

The slippery slope. Government-mandated smoking bans created it and every pro-ban advocate said it would never happen, that it was just about smoking. But smoking bans transferred to government the authority to control one's personal choices in the name of public health. As anti-ban supporters feared and warned, the government will not stop at smoking. And they have not and will not.

Three Mississippi pols introduced a bill in the state legislature that would make it illegal for restaurants to serve patrons who are obese. While it has a slim, not obese, chance at passing, the bill is a chilling reminder of what is at stake when we transfer personal decisions to the government from the individual. The bill can be found at thesmokinggun.com here. An excerpt:

The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establish shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when it is determined whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

Think it will stop there?

The Wire Blows Its Last Season

The first four seasons of The Wire were the best that television could offer. This season creator David Simon got too close to home and had too many bones to pick. He featured the Baltimore Sun, his former paper, and his anger toward the state of newspapers caused him to screw up the whole damn thing.

The Washington City Paper has the best critique of the show.

Season 5’s mistakes—clunky plotting, false parallels, confused motivations—are violations of the realism the show promised. And without a solid rooting in truth, The Wire doesn’t just have a bad season—it betrays its own intentions. David Simon broke a contract, changed the rules without warning. In his world, that’s something only the Wire-bad are supposed to do.

The World's Wealthiest Man Goes Warm and Fuzzy (After He Has Made Billions)

Bill Gates, is advocating for a kinder, more creative capitalism after he became the richest person in the world under the current system.

Microsoft Corp.'s chairman and co-founder, one of the world's wealthiest men, said business must work with governments and nonprofit groups to stem global poverty and spur more technological innovation for those left behind.

Let's not forget that Microsoft is the most ruthlessly capitalist company in the US. Have you upgraded to Vista? I did, and beyond my belief, my Vista documents are completely not viewable by anyone who has not upgraded. That is a new low in terms of compatability. I support the smartness of their strategy, but Bill Gates don't give me bullshit about compassionate capitalism when your company is as ruthless as it gets, knows they have a monopoly with businesses and deliberately force people to upgrade by making prior versions unviewable.

States and Cities "Cut" Budgets While Still Increasing Spending

George Orwell, in his dystopian novel 1984, created the word "doublethink." To quote Orwell, doublethink is,

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.

The concept of doublethink in Orwell's invention of it applied to governments and is relevant to the states and municpalities who are telling the people they are making "painful cuts" to government spending while they are actually increasing spending and the tax burden in a difficult time.

Exhibit #1 Maryland: Governor O'Malley raised taxes $1.4BN to address the "structural deficit" (another Orwellian term) and made $500MM of "cuts." Yet the MD budget is increasing 5.9% in 2008.

Exhibit #2 New York City: Mayor Bloomberg has "cut" the city budget. A NYT article headlined "Bloomberg Plans Cuts for City Agencies" reads,

With an already dim fiscal picture turning darker, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday proposed a budget that would increase spending by 3.7 percent but cut money from every city department, from sanitation to schools

The big conclusion here is that they are indeed cutting back every department but still are spending more money each year despite the cuts in services. The reason: out of market promises to union workers in terms of wage increases and retirement and health benefits. If you didn't like the real estate bubble, wait till this one comes home to roost.

NPR's "Fresh Air" Taps The Wire

Have you ever sat in your car when you were already home because you couldn't tear yourself away from a great NPR story that was playing on the radio? I did that yesterday, when Terry Gross interviewed Clark Johnson, who directed the first two episodes of The Wire as well as its last one and plays a newspaper editor in this final season. That interview was great and full of surprises, such as the fact that Johnson's mother was a wealthy white New York socialite who went to Spence and was disowned because she married a black man.

I sidled up to my radio today at 3pm to hear Gross interview Michael K. Williams, who plays the most interesting character on the show, Omar. If you did not hear it live, you can hear it via the earlier link. One nuggest is how Michael Williams was at a Baltimore bar and saw the person who now plays Snoop. He couldn't tell if she was a young boy or a woman and kept staring at her, "in a rude way," he admits. He was so intrigued with her that he introduced her to the producers, who created the Snoop role just for her.

The Wa Post had a great profile of Snoop here.

Four years out of prison, age 24, Snoop wasn't living a life lined up along the straight and narrow. She was back in the game, peddling drugs, running with the rough boys, an undersize woman with an oversize swagger. Not much good was coming her way.

Until the night that Snoop spotted "Omar," the gay thug on the acclaimed HBO show "The Wire," at a club. Or maybe he spotted her. Accounts differ.

Well "Omar" just set the record straight. Go Terry Gross and NPR for keeping me within ten feet of my radio.

Maryland Bill Seeks to Ban Trans-Fats in the State

Maryland is facing an enormous budget shortfall and just raised taxes by $1.4 billion, Baltimore is the setting for The Wire, and a state leglislator thinks that it is important to ban trans-fats in the state.

The legislation comes from Democrat James W. Hubbard, whose recent bill in Maryland’s House of Delegates would ban restaurants from serving foods with more than a half-gram of trans fat per serving. [Who would regulate that for Maryland, a new band of trans-fat experts?]

"Legislation efforts to ban trans fats are sweeping our nation, and that's a good thing for public health," said consumer health advocate Mike Adams, author of "Poison In the Food," a book about hydrogenated oils. "The more cities and states enact these bans, the more pressure it places on corporations like McDonald's to clean up their act and stop harming their customers' health with artificial ingredients known to be damaging to human health."

The trans fats ban would affect fast food restaurants and mom-and-pop eateries alike: it bans the use of margarine, shortening or anything with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils as part of the preparation of the food.

P.S. I am old enough to remember that margarine was supposed to be better than butter in terms of health. And I remember the 1980's outcry over McDonald's frying their fries in beef fat, which at that point was the devil and led them and other fast food outlets to fry with trans-fat.

Are All DC Workers Corrupt? It is Certainly Looking Like That

The Georgetown DMV is the latest District government agency to be found to be completely corrupt:

Law enforcement officers raided the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles branch in Georgetown on Wednesday, arresting one city employee and four other suspects on charges they set up a scheme to sell fake District driver’s licenses.

My assistant recently had a very hard time trying to renew my legitimate registration at that office. It entailed lots of phone calls, faxes and about three hours to get it done. I guess I should have just paid them off. In fact, the woman accused by the FBI was the woman who was my obstacle.

Mayor Adrian Fenty showed up for a news briefing at the scene. He deflected questions about whether the arrests were a further indication of widespread corruption among city employees. Instead, he said they were a sign that security safeguards were working.

DC employees are getting carted off in handcuffs in droves, stealing tax money and even funds dedicated to disabled children.

The DC city workforce might just be the most corrupt group of employees in a Western country.

DC Mayor Proposes $200 Million in Taxpayer Funds to Aid Waterfront Development

DC taxpayers are on the hook to pay a lot of their taxes to private developers already: $667MM for the Nationals' stadium, $50MM to fund improvements in the Verizon Center, $850MM for the flailing Convention Center and another $450MM to finance a hotel to try to make it less of a failure.

That adds up to a little over $2BN in taxpayer subsidies for "development" projects. Yet mayor Adrian Fenty wants to commit an additional $200MM in taxpayer money to redevelop the Southwest waterfront.

Developers have a profit motive. If they see an opportunity, taxpayers do not have to pay for it. If they do not see a profit, then taxpayers certainly should not be on the hook for subsidizing foolish ventures.

DC Track Star Disqualified Due to Her Muslim Garb

From a Wa Post article today:

Juashaunna Kelly, a Theodore Roosevelt High School senior who has the fastest mile and two-mile times of any girls' runner in the District this winter, was disqualified from Saturday's Montgomery Invitational indoor track and field meet after officials said her Muslim clothing violated national competition rules...

The outfit allows her to compete while complying with her Muslim faith, which forbids displaying any skin other than her face and hands.

This issue is complex for libertarians. On the one hand, people should be free to express their religion (I prefer that term to the loaded but media-adopted term "faith," which de facto categorizes the non-religious as lacking "faith"). On the other hand, sports have rules about uniforms and why should one's religion give a competitor a free pass to disregard those rules when, say, nudists cannot also disregard them and run meets in the buff?

The story of Ms. Kelly is a sob-inducing one, but allowing her to disregard uniform rules solely based on her religion either gives religion a privileged place in society or opens the door to anyone objecting to uniform requirements based on similar claims. That is a slippery slope.

Clinton's $70BN Plan to Help the Economy

Hillary Clinton has a huge tax-payer funded plan to help the economy as it slides into recession. The problem with it is that it is backed by a belief that the government, and not the private sector, is the cure to what ails us. Amity Shlaes, in her brilliant book The Forgotten Man methodically takes down the myth that FDR saved the country by making much of the workforce government employees and instead argues that FDR slowed recovery by creating government competition to the more efficient private sector.

Enter Clinton. Her plan is to spend $70BN in the following ways:

Her $70 billion plan includes $30 billion for a housing-crisis fund to provide grants to states, cities and community groups. The money would assist families in danger of foreclosure and buy vacant properties to rent to needy families. Another $25 billion would aid low-income families facing increased home-heating costs; $10 billion would supplement unemployment assistance to workers out of jobs for extended periods, and $5 billion would be aimed at promoting energy efficiency while creating "green industry" jobs.

My one by one counters to her plan:

1) Allocating $30BN of taxpayers' money to delinquent mortgage payers is extremely unfair to property owners who are responsible and to renters, who already get screwed in the tax code. Most if not all of the delinquent payers put no money down.

2) $25BN for home heating costs. They are indeed skyrocketing, at least for Americans, as the dollar is in a death spiral. But do we need to subsidize energy costs when we are trying to to go green (see #4)? If you really want oil prices to decrease then tell the Fed to RAISE interest rates and protect the dollar.

3) Unemployment assistance, $10BN: There is no proven relationship between government assistance and employment attainment. There are already Pell Grants for the needy to take classes.

4) Creating "green jobs." $4BN for that. What is that? I can't even criticize this point as it is so vague. Perhaps Clinton could back away from her backing of anti-green Ethanol subsidies and create a bunch of green jobs for farmers who actually grow food that can be eaten.

DC Mother Kills Her Four Children. Is the State to Blame or the Mother?

This week a horrible tragedy surfaced in DC. US Marshals enforcing an eviction notice found a disoriented woman, Banita Jacks. The home had no furnishings on the entire first floor, which was spray-painted with bizarre writing, and a foul stench permeating the house. When the Marshals went upstairs they found the corpses of Jacks' four daughters, ranging in age from 5 to 17, in an advanced state of decomposition.

Banita Jacks murdered her four daughters and is so sick that she lived with the rotting corpses in her house since, possibly, last May. She is a depraved maniac, yet all of the Washington media is focusing not on what a monster Jacks is but how it was a grand failure of the DC government that these children were murdered. Even an early story on the tragedy quickly (and editorially) posited:

Among the questions: How could Jacks's children disappear for so long without school officials, police or social workers noticing and stepping in to help? Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) promised some answers today.

Today's Wa Post story was 100% about the DC government's failure to prevent this tragedy. Every agency is on the hot seat, but if you read the article you learn that social service agencies tried on many occasions to tend to the family but Jacks did not answer the door. Even the concerned godmother of two of the children gave up and thought they must have moved away. The girls fell out of the school system because Banita said she was homeschooling them.

NPR today had an hour-long show devoted to decrying the state failure in these girls' deaths in which the hosts berated the participating public official that DC needs to do much more to prevent such atrocities. The pressured DC offcial in turn promised much more public (tax) spending to combat this sort of problem, and I am sure much more spending on ineffective programs will come. There is only so much a government can do when a mother wants to kill her children.

The media's treatment of this story is a sad statement of the transfer of responsibility from the individual to the state. DC did not kill those four young girls, their mother did.

High Fidelity versus Compressed Music

I posted on this before and got lots of angry comments from iPod fans but now I am emboldened by a comprehensive Rolling Stone article on the subject.

The gist of it is that current music releases are being engineered to sound good on iPods, not stereo systems, as most buyers today listen through their computer or their iPod.

...today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

As a high fidelity partisan, I applaud the efforts of brilliant deceased Jeff Buckley's mom to force his record company to resist the low-fi MP3 craze and instead produce real, good-sounding music:

In 2004, Jeff Buckley's mom, Mary Guibert, listened to the original three-quarter-inch tape of her son's recordings as she was preparing the tenth-anniversary reissue of Grace. "We were hearing instruments you've never heard on that album, like finger cymbals and the sound of viola strings being plucked," she remembers. "It blew me away because it was exactly what he heard in the studio."

To Guibert's disappointment, the remastered 2004 version failed to capture these details. So last year, when Guibert assembled the best-of collection So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley, she insisted on an independent A&R consultant to oversee the reissue process and a mastering engineer who would reproduce the sound Buckley made in the studio. "You can hear the distinct instruments and the sound of the room," she says of the new release. "Compression smudges things together."

Supremes Consider Capital Punishment

The issue being argued over is whether the three injection method employed by most states, "lethal injection," causes pain to the victim as the second injection, a paralytic, might simply mask horrible pain and suffering.

Having put my cat to sleep two years ago this case made me fret. But I was relieved to hear that veterinary procedures are actually much more humane than capital punishment. From the NYT,

Recently, a United States District Court judge in Tennessee ruled that the state had, in fact, violated the Eighth Amendment by disregarding the “substantial risk” that the three-drug cocktail would cause “unnecessary pain.” Those risks could have been addressed by additional safeguards, the judge said, or by switching to a straight no-chaser consisting of an overdose of a single barbiturate, the method recommended by a state study commission.

The single-drug procedure is already used routinely in the United States, on animals. It’s what is euphemized by the phrase, “I had to put my pet to sleep.” One possible result of the upcoming Supreme Court case is that execution protocols could switch from the standard three-drug cocktail to the single-drug format for animals recommended by the American Veterinary Medical Association.

I would like to see one presidential candidate come out against the death penalty as it is the ultimate abuse of state power but I think we are more likely to be lucky if the doomed get dispatched as humanely as do our pets.

Exeunt the Bush/Clinton Dynasties

The positive result of the cratering of Hillary's candidacy, love her or not, is that the US presidency will avoid the potential of 28 years of Bush/Clinton rule.

We are up to 20 years with those two families ruling and going beyond that would make me feel like we are living in a semi-democratic inheritence state. I don't care what Hillary has to say, I just want to elect someone who is not a Bush or a Clinton.

The Crack Reporter: A Drug War Parable

Wa Post veteran reporter Ruben Castaneda wrote a wonderful and harrowing article in that paper's past Sunday Magazine about his addiction to crack when he was, ironically, covering the crack wars of the early 90's in DC for his employer. His account is honest, sad, raw and brave. One vignette:

The Post issued quarterly "comp time" checks for days and hours worked beyond the normal workweek. Employees had the choice of taking the time or the money. I was on a frantic rat wheel, trying to stop using, failing, needing more cash. I always opted for the money. In October 1991, I received a comp check for about $700. I went home and fully intended to wait until the morning to deposit the check at my bank. I started drinking. I got into my car and drove, winding up at a check-cashing place in Adams Morgan. One, two rocks tops, I told myself. I ended up smoking through the night with a friend. Within 24 hours, all the money was gone.

Kudos to the Wa Post for not firing Ruben and instead being sympathetic and helpful.

On December 20, 1991, I showed up for work obviously wrecked. I'd binged on rock and tried to bring myself down with three or four gin-and-Cokes. My eyes were glazed, and my breath smelled of liquor. I was told to go home and come back the next night.

The following night, Milton [Ruben's editor] met me in the newsroom. He said we needed to go meet with the EAP counselor. In her small office, she dropped the bombshell: They'd made arrangements for me to spend the next three weeks in the rehab unit at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.

Ruben defeated his addiction and has been a productive Post reporter in the 15 years since. Had the Post fired him, as most companies would have done, instead of working to reduce the harm of his addiction, we can only guess where Ruben would be today. Ruben's Wa Post online chat today is here.

Romo in Cancun With Jessica?

I was disappointed that the Redskins lost their playoff game last night to Seattle. The talk in my supermarket's aisles in DC today was that had we won, we surely would have beaten Dallas next week. Not only because of the intense rivalry and the fact that we beat them last week, but because of Wilbon's report today that Tony Romo spent the weekend in Cancun with Jessica Simpson.

Tony Romo can't quite get through the NFL season without losing his football focus to focus on a pop star hoochie. Last season it was, infamously, Carrie Underwood. This season it is Simpson, whose well-televised appearance at the Cowboys' upset loss to Philadelphia sparked a new round of criticism from Dallas fans and exultation from its foes. As People reported,

Jessica Simpson was certainly as glamorous as any Dallas Cheerleader Sunday night, with her perfectly coiffed hair and miniature Tony Romo jersey emblazoned with a pink number 9. But she wasn't exactly a good luck charm.

Her new boyfriend struggled all game, throwing three interceptions and fumbling the ball twice as his heavily favored Cowboys lost to the Philadelphia Eagles 10-6. At one point, the network even showed a montage of Simpson, 27, spliced with shots of Romo's bad throws. As commentator Joe Buck noted, "It's never easy to play in front of your girlfriend."

That seems especially true for Romo. The 27-year-old Pro-Bowler ended the game with a quarterback rating of just 22.2 – that's the worst ever in his entire career. (In comparison, his average rating this year is over 100.) His previous low? Last December, when then-girlfriend Carrie Underwood was in the stands.

My pick for next week: the Giants against Dallas.

Anti-Libertarian Wins Arlington County Head Council Seat

Campaigning on a platform of banning trans-fats and smoking, requiring property owners who sell their property to pay for the relocation of their tenants and also generally hating cars, Walter Tejada became Arlington Board Chairman on New Year's Day. From today's Wa Post:

Tejada (D) said he would encourage restaurants to ban the use of trans fat in foods, seek to eliminate smoking in public places and require property owners to pay relocation assistance to low-income tenants who are displaced. The county also will urge residents to give up their cars to save money and reduce greenhouse gases.

All of us who believed that smoking bans were the first step in a slippery slope of government control of personal choices were, basically, right.

Tejada says he would "encourage" but if you read the article he is doing everything in his power to coerce and ban through the strong arm of the law.

"A lot of people in our community would be inclined to go to restaurants that don't use trans fats."

I agree with this point, but come out completely opposite of Tejada: let patrons make their own decisions and there is no need for government control of patrons' choices.

I won't even go into the assault on property rights that he is proposing.

Welcome to the New Year and Its Higher Taxes

As a District resident I never thought that I would see the day that MD and VA raised taxes and DC did not. But that day is here. This month the biggest tax hikes in MD and VA history go into effect. Maybe I should bless the dysfunction of the DC schools as expensive families keep moving out of the city.

In Maryland:

Maryland will begin implementing the largest tax increase in state history today, when higher tobacco, vehicle titling and corporate income taxes and sweeping changes to personal income tax rates go into effect.

The overhaul of Maryland's tax structure, which became law in November after a frantic special legislative session, will generate new revenue to help solve the state government's festering budget problems. Lawmakers also passed legislation requiring about $550 million in budget cuts. The cuts and new tax revenue are expected to close a projected budget deficit of at least $1.5 billion next fiscal year.

In Virginia:

If you plan to sell a home, buy a car or get a vehicle repaired in Northern Virginia, it's going to cost a bit more starting today, because of the transportation bill passed by the General Assembly last year.

Lawmakers gave the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority the power to impose taxes and fees that are expected to raise as much as $325 million a year for road and transit improvements. About $75 million of the annual revenue will be earmarked for Metro and the Virginia Railway Express.

Are Federal Judges Underpaid?

Supreme Court Chief John Roberts, in his report on the federal judiciary, urges increases in federal judges' pay. His argument is based on the fact that judges can make more in the private sector.

U.S. District Court judges earn $165,200 a year, the same as members of Congress.

The dollar amount, Justice Roberts wrote, is about the same as, and in some cases less than, first-year lawyers at firms in major cities. Judges' pay would go up to $233,500 annually under a bill the House Judiciary Committee passed 28-5 on Dec. 12. "The cost of this long overdue legislation -- less than .004% of the annual federal budget -- is minuscule in comparison to what is at stake," said Justice Roberts...Federal appeals court judges are paid $175,100 annually, and their salaries would go up to $247,500. The eight associate justices of the Supreme Court are paid $203,000 annually and their salaries would rise to $286,900. Justice Roberts's salary would go up from $212,100 to $299,800.

I am open but not convinced of his argument. Associates at Skadden Arps in New York might make more than $165K but they also work 100 hour weeks proofreading boring documents and have no pension benefits and most of them are weeded out or quit before they make partner, so it is not comparable to being a sitting judge deciding interesting cases and getting a pension. Those guilty associates also live in New York or other expensive cities. Does the US really need to pay a federal judge in (hated) Iowa $233K just to keep him on the bench?

The normally "Two Americas" NYT op-ed page came out in support of this raise. So the NYT thinks it is okay for government employees to be "rich," but doesn't like when private sector employees achieve that same level of compensation, decrying the "income gap".

Trans-Fat Ban Starts in Montgomery County, MD

I had a laugh today when I read the Wa Post article about the enaction of Montgomery County's trans-fat ban. I was brought back to a car ride with my mother, about 20 years ago, when smoking was banned in airplanes. My mother was happy about this as she hates the smell of smoke. But young libertarian me countered: if you give the government the power to ban cigarettes because they are unhealthy, then you give the government the power to ban butter. "Oh no," my mother said, "they will never ban butter."

They have not yet banned butter, but they have banned margarine.

The Tastee Diner in Bethesda, pictured above, is not a big fan of the mandate. According to its owner, the

estimated the switch to a trans-fat-free menu will add $1,500 a month to his supply tab, which he will pass on to his customers. "Things are going to be a little less tasty and a little more expensive, but we'll survive," said Wilkes, who has owned the popular 24-hour diners since 1971, summarizing Montgomery's latest foray into the legislation of healthy habits.

If you give the government the power to legislate what you do not like, you also give them the power to legislate what you do like. In any event, individual liberty ought to trump the likes and dislikes of fellow citizens.

A New Newspaper Shows Up in DC: The Rock Creek Free Press

On Connecticut Avenue today I noticed a bastard news dispenser and picked up its paper: Rock Creek Free Press. The paper bills itself as "A fiecely independent newspaper."

Its front page echoes libertarian themes. Here are some headlines:

Liberty Dollar Company Raided by Feds

CIA Hides Torture Tapes

International Regulation of Dietary Supplements Looms

US Claims Right to Kidnap British Citizens

NIE Exposes War Party

Sounds good, but then the paper goes off the rails by running a page one article featuring former Italian president Francesco Cossiga alleging that 9/11 was "an inside job." Does anyone really think that the CIA would take down both towers of the WTC, bomb the Pentagon and try to hit the Capitol? No.

But Rock Creek Free Press is a fun read otherwise.

Drag King for a Day

Sexuality is becoming extremely confusing. I always cherished my SF work trips as I could bliss out being surrounded by the world's best self-selection of beautiful lesbians and getting awesome booty. It was a very simple exchange. Then something happened: a lot of them started growing beards and going transgender. If I am not into men then why would I be into women who are pretending to be men, with fake facial hair and "packing" to boot?

SF still has a huge reservoir of hot "normal" lesbians but the transgender thing is huge there, as they all seem to flock to the place that most tolerates them.

Emily Yoffe of Slate waded herself into this complex dynamic when, as Slate's Human Guinea Pig, she agreed to become a Drag King. Her super interesting story and video of her performance are here.

Other subplots abound, as Montgomery County recently made it illegal to discrimate based on gender identity, versus actual gender, in bathrooms and locker rooms. I know the proponent of this legislation, Dana Beyer, who works for a key MoCo committee. And I see Dana at cocktail parties and "she" is very nice but I am 100% opposed to opening women's toilets and locker rooms to anyone who is not female by birth. Some things are sacred, such as a same-sex locker room.

"I Am Legend" Scared the Crap Out of Me

I saw the trailer for I am Legend at the Uptown in Cleveland Park while I was there to see the totally mindless but entertaining The Kingdom. The Kingdom presented US protaganists who were so obnoxious that I was actually rooting for the radical Islamists to kill them. But back to the trailer...

It looked to me like an alien movie akin to Independence Day. The big money shot was the Brooklyn bridge getting shot down. I thought that aliens had done that and enthusiastically went back to the Uptown to see I Am Legend.

But no, aliens did not do it. The US Air Force did. The movie is not about aliens at all but about a virus gone amok. The virus kills 90% of humans on the spot and turns another 9% into hairless aggressive zombie beasts who want to kill the 1% of humans who are immune from the virus, for reasons that are not explained.

The film was fucking scary. Will Smith and his loyal non-infected German Shepherd are alone in Manhattan except for a few thousand zombies who only operate in the dark but have obtained, through the virus, non-human skills such as running faster than the speed of light (Slate article on how zombies have gotten faster over time here), being able to vertically scale buildings and a spider-like ability to hang from ceilings.

The non-infected dog of course got bit by an infected dog and became a monster so Will Smith had to strangle him. The climax was when Smith killed himself as an army of zombies, who he had the ability to cure but they didn't care, zeroed in on him. Man, this movie gave me nightmares. There was a toss to the optimistic that there was a non-inflected colony in Vermont.

So the movie was super disturbing. Living in Manhattan alone with zombies might actually be worse than spending Christmas with my family.

How Hard is it to Get a Regular Mail Carrier?

USPS dysfunction can be shown by my personal experience. I routinely receive mail that does belong to me and sometimes find mail in my shrubs. In the past seven years I have had only one regular carrier for only a 9 month period.

The USPS is a total disaster. They literally cannot produce a mail carrier to do my route. The past several ones have been fired for not showing up or being late. I am getting used to having half of my mail being addressed to people who are not me and getting my mail at 6pm.

When I questioned the mail carrier who does the route once per week as to why we don't have a dedicated person for my route, the answer is: I could do this route, but if I do I make $2k less per year and that reduces my retirement benefit so why should I do this?

All of us who have no retirement benefits do not exactly love that comment. But it is real. So the mail of people who have no retirement benefits is getting screwed up by those who do.

How Much Can You Love Your Local Restaurant?

I am in love with the food at Buck's Fishing and Camping, a NW DC restaurant. Chef Carole Greenwood cooks up the best food in the city, focusing on local ingredients and I just cannot praise the food enough.

But do not ask for a substitution. There is an element of fear here. Everyone in my neighborhood knows the drill of the food Nazi coming out to the table and screaming to regulars who had been going there for years and were trying to show the place off to newcomers, "If you don't like how the steak is cooked I will give it to my dog!" Carole does not have a dog. But she does have a bark.

The low of lows was last week when I was eating at the bar and Carole came out screaming to the wait staff: You fucking bitches!

Anyway, I thought I would pass on my favorite eccentric DC great food haunt to you.

Government Policies Caused the Mortgage Crisis. Do We Trust Them to Solve It?

The biggest factor that drove the housing bubble and subsequent mortgage industry collapse is the IRS code that allows for mortgage interest to be tax deductible. That policy also allows property owners to itemize deductions, which, without being a property owner, is a pretty hard thing to do.

So should we be surprised that so many Americans were trying desperately to be homeowners when the tax code puts renting at such an economic disadvantage? What is wrong with renting, anyway?

The Fed has proposed new tough laws on lending that will hurt consumers. I propose instead that mortgage brokers, who were the real bad players in this debacle, operate under a self-regulatory organization such as stock brokers do under NASD. Under NASD, brokers have a "suitability" requirement. I would prefer to see all options of loans available to the consumer with a bit more of responsibility on the part of the brokers.

How Do Libertarians Define Freedom?

I know that most of the readers of this blog are primarily concerned with civil liberty infractions that involve drug laws, strippers, eminent domain, smoking, etc. I care passionately about those issues too. I also care about the fiscal aspect and believe in minimal government. A few months ago I had drinks with the most awesome lawyer, Dana Berliner, who works for IJ and has been the libertarian voice on eminent domain.

I was disconcerted at a cocktail party that Dana confessed that she did not sympathize with the libertarian "economic or fiscal issues." To me, economic and social liberty are inseparable. The right to work is fundamental. And I blame the IRS code for creating many problems, including the political marriage issue and the economic incentives favoring home ownership that led to the current crisis in mortgages. Any thoughts on this, you libertarians?

Andrew Sullivan Endorses Ron Paul

It is great to see someone who is gay abandon the Dems and endorse a libertarian. The Dems, with their traditional embrace of government power over the individual and their main candidates' scary declarations of Christianity and "faith" based values, are just as much a threat to freedom as are the Huckabees of this world. Here are Sullivan's reasons why he went for Ron Paul:

The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul's federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul. He is a man of faith who nonetheless sees a clear line between religion and politics. More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left and the Christianist meddling of the right. The Paulites' enthusiasm for liberty, their unapologetic defense of core conservative principles, their awareness that in the new millennium, these principles of small government, self-reliance, cultural pluralism, and a humble foreign policy are more necessary than ever - no lover of liberty can stand by and not join them.

Fact Check: Is the Middle Class Really Getting Screwed with Taxes?

The Dem candidates have one theme in common: that the middle class, through George Bush's tax cuts, are getting screwed while "the rich" are paying next to nothing and fiddling as Rome burns. Obama has been going wild proposing tax cuts for the middle class. But the middle class pays almost no federal taxes (an average 4% rate) as a result of Clinton's and Bush's tax cuts and Congress's largesse toward child deductions.

Some facts need to be inserted into this populist debate, which is really a debate about the redistribution of wealth and not about what any taxpayer should pay the government. Number one is that the bottom 50% of taxpayers shoulder only 3% of the tax burden. Number two is that the top 1% of earners (and they are not necessarily "rich" as the cost of living in SF or NYC make the IRS rates favor those in cheap locales) paid a whopping 39% of all taxes in 2005. In terms of who is getting screwed, it is certainly not the middle class. How much less should the average earner pay, 3%, 2%, nothing? The perverse aspect of the Clinton and Bush tax cuts is that they took the skin out of the game for most of the country.

Romney, You are No Jack Kennedy

Is our country regressing toward a religious litmus test? The founding fathers, in the first amendment decided that

there would be no religious test, oath or other requirement for any federal elected office.

Mitt Romney yesterday gave a most religious speech to try to win over religious voters. It was billed as a parallel to the speech that JFK gave to quell concerns that he would not answer to the Pope. But the speeches could not have been more different.

JFK's words:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

In complete and utter contrast, Romney assured, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind."

Huckabee Surge Helps the Democrats

Huckabee has a two to one lead over Romney in Iowa. As much as I would love to see Iowa blown into the irrelevance that it deserves, it is important with our current primary system.

If Huckabee wins Iowa and the Republican primary then there is a 100% chance that the Democratic candidate will win the general election.

Fiscal conservatives, who used to vote Republican, cannot stand the Christian values litmus test and will vote against it. They are a big swing group that the GOP ignores. And libertarians hate Huckabee's tax raising and Nanny State policies.

A Snowy Day and DC Government Dysfunction

I woke up today surprised to see a coat of white in my yard. Then I got that awful feeling: I need to get to a business dinner tonight. Will the DC government get salt and plows on my street?

Sadly, the answer was No. The snow started at 6 AM and I left my house at 5:30 PM, eleven and a half hours later. I really needed to get to this dinner so I figured that my drive to Connecticut Ave was downhill so I should be okay and the ride back was anybody's guess.

I did get downtown but, as I feared, the ride back was anybody's guess. Even Nebraska Ave was icy and unplowed and not salted. In fact, I did not see one plow or salt truck all night. I managed to get my car within a mile of my house and then hoofed the rest on foot. I live in DC, which proports to be a city and certainly taxes you as if you lived in one.

How can a city completely break down with a few inches of snow? 14 hours after the start of snowfall, there was still no response.

I am excited to make my mile snowy walk tomorrow morning at 7 to fetch my car so that I can be on time to my meeting.

Teddy Bear Teacher Gets to Keep Her Head

Despite the will of the angry Islamic Sudanese mob that wanted her executed, Ms. Gillian Gibbons got a new lease on life as the UK pressed for her release and she is now back in the UK.

This incident should be incredibly embarrassing to Sudan and all Islamist countries. The thought of having mobs want to kill a teacher who let her pupils, all of them Muslim, name a teddy bear Muhammed is beyond a farce.

It ranks up there with Saudi Arabia sentencing a woman who was gang-raped with 90 lashes because she was with a male who was not her relative when they were both attacked.

CAFE Follies

Congress, in its typical knee jerk response to "do something" is about to do something stupid. In this case it regards Congress legislating a minimum of fuel miles per gallon.

The proposal, which would require automakers to achieve 35 miles per gallon on average, is similar to a measure passed earlier this summer by the Senate, which was bitterly opposed by the auto companies, who argued they did not have the technology or the financial resources to reach that goal.

What is so idiotic about this Bill is that is does not punish consumption. I have a sports car that I rarely drive. I walk, bike or take my vespa mostly. Yet Congress would okay someone who drives 150 miles per day in their hybrid, and they get tax deduction too, and outlaw my car. That is gefucked.

DC Public School Reform: The Good and the Bad

The DC public school system spends $18K per student annually yet ranks dead last nationally in terms of student achievement. Even worse, its employees are a den of thieves who are so craven that they routinely steal funds raised for student activity clubs. The most craven theft was from a chess club for troubled students that had miraculously catapulted them into a national competition. Sayonara chess club, as

Business manager Sandy Jones ripped off most of the $73,000 that had been donated on behalf of the chess team, according to the Post investigation and federal authorities.

Jones is accused of using the school's ATM card more than 100 times to steal from the chess fund.

Enter energetic Mayor Adrian Fenty and new schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. They are tackling the right issues but as a taxpayer my disappointment is that every problem they solve costs more money, even as the schools lose students and therefore, in any rational world, should cost less.

The Good: Rhee wants to fire a third of the central office employees because they are worse than useless. One woman she wants to fire has cost the District $500K per year educating one student because the employee never filed the proper paperwork.

The Bad: The DC Council opposes Rhee's initiative and views the DCPS as the employer of last resort. Chairman Gray wondered, "what will happen to these people." And the firing will cost $6 million in severance payments.

The Good: Rhee has re-evaluated the insane $1.2 billion allocated to remodeling half-empty schools, many of which need to be shut, that the Council had approved. The remodeling plan was to remodel all of the schools, which overall are at about 50% capacity, and then at a later date close schools. Rhee wants to close 24 schools first, then renovate the existing ones.

The Bad: Somehow this smart move will cost DC taxpayers another $31.6 million over the current budget.

Our "Voluntary" Tax System

Charles Rangel, in explaining his "Mother of All Tax Reforms" bill, which would raise taxes by $3.5 trillion over the next ten years, says his bill would

"restore a sense of equity and fairness that is critical to the success of our voluntary tax system."

Voluntary tax system? Are we living in the same country? Federal withholding is not voluntary. The tax code has nothing voluntary about it. If you don't pay they put garnishes on your wages, then liens on your property and then you go to prison. Voluntary?

In the IRS realm, unlike the rest of the US justice system, the accused are presumed guilty until they can prove themselves innocent. And the IRS will use their full power under the law, with guns blazing, even over a minor dispute.

Today I got a letter from the IRS claiming that I owe them $766, a small sum and I think that they are wrong. But here is the "we will destroy you" content of the letter I received:

This is our notice of our intent to levy (take) any state tax refunds that you might be entitled to. In addition, we will begin to search for other assets that we might levy.

Mr. Rangel, what exactly do you mean by "voluntary?" The IRS can put a lien on my home for a $766 dispute?

Hate Crimes and Employment Discrimination

The Democratic Congress has introduced a bill that calls for federal penalties for hate crimes. This bill,

Allows the Attorney General to provide assistance for the criminal investigation of crimes that are considered a felony and are motivated by prejudice based on the perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim.

So what this bill means is that if a guy throws a punch at someone without calling the victim a slur word he will be prosectuted locally, a misdemeanor, but if he calls him a faggot while punching the infractor will have to face federal charges.

A punch is a punch and all should face equal penalties.

I 100% support equal treatment of every citizen under the law. The hate crimes bill undermines that.

In terms of ENDA, I am sympathetic as I have seen so many gay people screwed. But as a business owner I believe that hiring decisions should not be regulated by the federal government.

As a woman in finance, I think our cause has been hurt by prior similar Congressional acts such as the one that forbid employers from asking about pregnancy. Such edict only hurts professional women generally as they are all assumed to be about to be unproductive and cost the company money even if they have no plans to have children. That only hurts the career-focused women who are not planning to have children and tosses them into the group of women who have kids, demand to work part-time and cannot travel.

DC Tax Theft Mastermind is My Neighbor

DC is not a city of tear-downs replaced by McMansions. But there was one in my neighborhood and-- surprise-- it belongs to Harriett Walters, the mastermind behind the theft of $31 million and counting from the DC Treasury.

To compound on the scandal, the assessment office is a den of favors and out of control discretion. I have a friend in Logan Circle who was unhappy with her rapidly appreciating assessment and taxes. She went through the proper channels and her appeal was rejected. Then she called the assessment office and (in a morally compromised way) affected an African American accent and decried gentrification. Lo and behold her assessment was on the spot reduced by 50% by the woman on the phone.

I can only imagine what the friends and relatives of that woman pay in property taxes.

Montgomery County Hospitals Ban Smoking Outside, and Smelling Like Smoke

A coalition of hospitals in Montgomery County, MD (a Nanny State), just banned smoking on their hospital campuses.

The use of tobacco products will be prohibited anywhere on the hospitals' grounds -- outside entrances, on walkways or in parking lots and garages. Gazebos where smoking has been permitted are being dismantled, and cans for cigarette butts will disappear...

They also printed small cards with "scripts" for staff members to follow if they see a colleague, visitor, patient or family member puffing away. The suggested dialogue is more courteous than curt, but employees could face disciplinary action for repeated violations. A worker with clothes smelling of tobacco might be issued disposable coveralls or asked to go home and change.

Maybe hospitals should instead focus on the 195,000 people they kill each year through error instead of policing the smell of smoke on one's clothes.

Bilkemor LLC and the Complete Dispect of DC Taxpayer Money

Bilkemor is the audacious name that a DC employee, Harriette Walters, created for a sham corporation, one of many she created to steal more than $30 million from DC taxpayers.

It was so easy. She would submit false refunds and the only other check in this system, Diane Gustus, was also part of the fraud so she would sign off and get paid.

The only silver lining in this scandal is that DC Council members have been inundatated with outrage and hopefully will not be in the mood to pass the type of tax increase that Maryland is facing.

Reason's Radley Balko commented on the issue here.

Smoking Back at DC's Aroma Bar

In a victory against the Nanny State, patrons are again allowed to smoke at DC's Aroma, a quiet hip bar in Cleveland Park. That was my favorite watering hole to park up to, ask awesome bartender Krishna which martini I should drink, light up and read the City Paper. I haven't been back since the ban, and neither have a lot of their other customers.

Alas, it took Aroma to almost go out of business to get the exemption. From Wa Post's Going Out Gurus:

A friend and I went to Aroma last night to say goodbye to longtime bartender Krishna Ramsundar, and as we walked in, we took in the aroma. It wasn't because we were caught up in the moment -- it was because we smelled the fragrant odor of burning tobacco. Ashtrays were scattered across the bar, a guy lit up a celebratory cigar and, later, one man wandered in while puffing away on a pipe.

For a moment, we felt like we were in some 2006 bizarro world. Was this the patrons' way of saying goodbye to Krishna, a bartender who likes the occasional smoke break while working? Was this a critical mass-style protest against the city-wide smoking ban?

Hardly. All the puffing away was completely legal, because Aroma is the first D.C. bar to receive a hardship exemption from the city's Department of Health.

In the six months after the smoking ban began, Aroma's owners say, business fell at least 20 percent from the year before. "Aroma was set up as a cigar bar, and [smoking] was pretty core to its identity," explains Curt Large, the chief operating officer of Bedrock Management, Aroma's parent company. Once smokers could no longer enjoy a cigar or cigarette with their cocktails or cognac, he says, they simply stopped coming.

Gisele Knows What the Fed Does Not

I am old enough to remember stagflation, odd and even number gas rationing and Carter's fireside chats.

Here we go again. The dollar has plummeted in value from 0.85 Euros to 1.46. That is a relative loss of 72%. This a major economic catastrophe in the works, as the unstable dollar is causing lender countries like China to dump dollars.

If China and other surplus nations stop buying our debt then we are toast, as our debt just hit a record of $9 trillion. Watch the debt clock here.

Then we have oil at $100 a barrel, which is triple for US consumers since 2000 but only double for Euro nations, as their currency is strong.

The Fed, instead of lowering interest rates, should have raised them to maintain the value of our currency. Inflation and the loss of confidence in the dollar are not so good for the economy.

Even Tom Brady's supermodel girlfriend understands this as she now demands payments in the Euro and not the greenback. Why does not Ben Bernanke know what Gisele does? And will Tom Brady demand his salary in Euros?

California Is Obsessed with Not Smoking

To build on Rob's post below, I just got back from a trip to the Bay Area and was amazed at the proliferation of no-smoking signs, especially at the airport. It is well understood that one cannot smoke in a US airport. We all know that. But California likes to remind you of that every five steps you take. There are "No Smoking" stickers everywhere in the Oakland airport. The frequency of the stickers betrays an insane obsession with something that never happens and, if it did, would not be the end of the world. It is easier to get a fake bomb through TSA security than it is to smoke inside of OAK or SFO.

And smoking is now also banned outside of those airports, where health issues cannot credibly be a problem. Smokers used to be sent to a fenced off area outside of the airports but that is now gone so they are banned completely, as no smoking signs are posted everywhere outdoors.

I was in wine country and the Healdsburg town center park had a big sign that said, No Smoking in This Park. SF has just passed a similar park ban. These signs are such Nanny State visual pollution that I can't imagine that smoking is more annoying.

As to the health justification of smoking bans, it has become clear that the anti-smoking lobby used that as an excuse to ban workplace smoking and now just wants to ban it everywhere, just as MADD morphed from an anti-drunk driving lobby into an anti-drinking lobby.

Iraq Dam Collapse Could Kill 500,000

More bad news from Iraq:

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. "The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

So if that dam collapses, the US looks terrible. Had we never invaded Iraq, it would not be our responsibility, but now it is. Bush, in 2000, campaigned against nation-building, yet he has committed us to the biggest and possibly most fruitless and expensive nation-building campaign in US history.

I am sure that dam in Iraq sucks and needs to be rebuilt. So do the levees in New Orleans and the highways and bridges across America. The fact that our government is paying for the former and skimping on the latter is a betrayal of conservatism.

DC Police Find a New Way to Scare People

"The Rumbler" is a new device installed on MPD marked cars. It "vibrates everything" within 200 feet and is being used in conjunction with sirens and lights to force motorists to yield to police cars.

I would have less issue with The Rumbler if it replaced the urban nuisance of constant police siren blaring, much of it probably unnecesary, at all hours. Instead, this device will be an additional nuisance. If it shakes anything within 200 feet, then won't it also rattle windows of homes? From the Wa Post today:

With a pair of high-output woofers and an amplifier, the Rumbler is not louder than a regular siren. It gets its message across with low-frequency sound waves that shake everything, including rear-view mirrors.

The Rumbler is meant to be used judiciously, in situations where motorists should pull over to make way for the police. It is timed to turn off automatically after 10 seconds. Still, police officials said, some people might be startled when they first experience it. And it remains to be seen if the public will view all that shaking as a helpful warning or just a nuisance.

Hit & Run post on the subject here. To assess the odds of police using force "judiciously" go here.