This week’s poem of the week is The Raven.
Poem of the Week: 3/8/09-3/14/09
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Author Archives: the editor
Rant of the Week: 3/8/09-3/14/09
This week’s rant of the week is Accounting for California’s Suicide.
Essay of the Week: 3/8/09-3/14/09
This week’s essay of the week is Lunch Today.
Map showing unemployment by region
This is a cool map from the New York Times. Fly over country rules.
Just in case you thought defense spending was about defense
It was Democrats who stuffed an estimated $524 million in defense earmarks that the Pentagon did not request into the 2008 appropriations bill, about $220 million more than Republicans did, according to an independent estimate. Of the 44 senators who implored Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in January to build more F-22 Raptors — a fighter conceived during the Cold War that senior Pentagon officials say is not suited to probable 21st-century conflicts — most were Democrats.
And last July, when the Navy’s top brass decided to end production of their newest class of destroyers — in response to 15 classified intelligence reports highlighting their vulnerability to a range of foreign missiles — seven Democratic senators quickly joined four Republicans to demand a reversal. They threatened to cut all funding for surface combat ships in 2009.
Within a month, Gates and the Navy reversed course and endorsed production of a third DDG-1000 destroyer, at a cost of $2.7 billion.
Worth Repeating
Most people (ironically those deemed psychologically healthy) have an optimistic bias and generally assign too high odds of things working out well (the mildly depressed make more accurate assessments. I have often wondered which way the causality runs: do they make better assessments BECAUSE their unhappy state strips away the rose-colored filter, or are they mildly depressed because they keep giving more realistic assessments, which makes them a drag to be around, and they are depressed because they encounter social rejection?).
Things You Don't Want To Know
From the Wall Street Journal…..
The legislation, introduced late Thursday by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, would temporarily allow the FDIC to borrow $500 billion to replenish the fund it uses to guarantee bank deposits, if the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department concur. Those funds would be distinct from the contentious $700 billion financial-sector bailout, which lawmakers are loathe to expand.
It would also be distinct from the stimulus plan. But who really cares? What difference one way or another will another half trillion dollars make? It is only equal to the cost of another war in Iraq.
From The San Fransisco Chronicle…….
In a 2006 ruling, Henderson said the $1.1 billion medical care system was causing the unnecessary death of one inmate per week. He said the state was incapable of repairing the system and appointed a manager to run it under his supervision.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for a return to state control last month. He also has appealed Henderson’s order that the state pay the first $250 million of the manager’s $8 billion plan to rebuild prison hospitals.
The courts can appoint managers who are superior to the elected authorities? I can see giving people standing to sue or forcing pay outs to those deemed to have died “unnecessarily.” But it seems to me that under this reasoning the Supreme Court could decided that the Federal government was not allowing people to exercise all their constitutional rights and so they were going to appoint a new president.
I will make it semi-official on the recorded line. I tell my dispatcher that I will be more than happy to try to get airborne (that is what I get paid for…), but in my opinion, we should think about canceling the flight. He puts me on hold for a few minutes…
“We want you to try.”
I would really hate to be on a plane were the pilot said that “we should think about canceling” and was told “we want you to try.” But I imagine that it happens a lot.
Anything for a cigarette
Since navigation was often uncertain when Zeppelins were flying above clouds, some were equipped with an observation basket that could be lowered through the cloud layers. In that way one or two men in the basket would have a good view of the earth’s surface. From this position, they could keep the ship informed by telephone of the landmarks below, helping it navigate to and from its target.
Of course this was particularly hazardous, as the men were without parachutes in a flimsy basket dangling at the end of a 750 meter tether, in freezing cold. Yet there never seems to have been a shortage of volunteers for this duty. In part this was due to the very high morale of the airshipmen. But volunteers also gained a privilege denied to everyone else on the ship; the little basket dangling at the end of nearly a half-mile of cable was the only place on the airship where a man was allowed to have a cigarette.
They are all dying
This ought to be illegal
The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion.
With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion.
That lack of funds explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years — more than half of them since 1997 — public records show.
The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers.
In the CTA deal, the fund borrowed $1.9 billion by promising to pay bondholders a 6.8 percent return. The proceeds of the bond sale, held in a money market fund, earned 2 percent — 70 percent less than what the fund was paying for the loan.
The public gets nothing from pension bonds — other than a chance to at least temporarily avoid paying for higher pension fund contributions. Pension bonds portend the possibility of steep tax increases.
Read the whole article for all the disgusting details. For example, by law most states have to guarantee pay back of those pension bonds.