Month: February 2008

Taliban Style CatholicsGo After High School Sports

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In Kansas*, a religious high school refused to allow a female referee to officiate at their game, because they did not believe that women should ever have authority over men.

To the credit of then Kansas State High School Activities Association, they are in the process of considering banning St. Mary’s Academy from any sporting events with their members schools if this is actually their policy.

They should do so, and they so should do so for non sports activities too. Whether that be beauty contests, band competitions, car washes, or educational conferences.

These people are the real American Taliban, and any accomodation will encourage more extreme demands.

*You know, Kansas would be the last place that I would expect this. So say we all, by the might of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Carbon Trading: Once Again, Speculative Market Type Solutions to Real Problems Fail Abysmally

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It appears that they have discovered that outright fraud is destroying carbon trading.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, one out of every five carbon credits that’s been issued by the United Nations may be bogus in the sense that the projects being credited for reducing emissions are in fact increasing emissions.

The justification for carbon trading has been that speculative markets will magically find truth and the best way of doing things.

The real justification is that people with MBAs can create complex instruments that generate them lots of fees for doing things that do not benefit the public, or achieve the stated goals of the program.

Basically, this is gambling, and Wall Street sets itself up as the house. It’s what the FDR era regulations were supposed to minimize, and what 30 years of deregulation, starting under Carter, have given us.

It’s a system that encourages phony numbers and lying to generate fees and profits.

Carbon trading is a carbon tax, they both serve to raise the cost of releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

The only difference is that the former benefits Wall Street types, and the latter benefits everyone, so under today’s morality, the former is good, and the latter is bad.

The US Has No Permanent Military Bases Anywhere

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Remember when I claimed that Bush’s statement of “No Permanent Bases in Iraq” was a lie?

Well, now we get the parsing, because Bush and His Evil Minions™ are now saying that the US has no permanent bases anywhere in the world.

We don’t have them in Japan, or Korea, or Germany, because at some point, the host government could ask us to leave, or, in a few billion years, the sun could go nova.

I knew that his “no permanent bases” statement was a lie, but now he’s parsing it on the basis of what the word “is” is.

McCain is a Hypocrite

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Yep, ths striaght talker has voted against making torture illegal. He wants to be president, and that means that he has to make nice with pro-torture Neanderthals.

Additionally, McCain has Bo Harmon as his national political director. If you recall, Harman ran the 2002 Saxby Chambliss campaign against Max Cleland of Georgia, which questioned the courage of a man who lost an arm and both legs in military service to this country.

At the time, John McCain called it, “Worse than disgraceful,” but it now appears that it was not so disgraceful that he can’t hire this pig felching rat bastard.

Conyers Introduces Contempt Resolution Against Bolton and Miers

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It’s actually a bit more complex. He has introduced two resolutions, one for contempt against Bolton and Miers, and a second one would authorize the House Judiciary Committee to go to court, since Mukasey has said that he won’t enforce a contempt citation.

Nice that Conyers is doing this, but it ain’t gonna hit the floor, because it’s:

NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!

Rep Markey Tries Incrementalism In New Net Neutrality Bill

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Once again, the draw by crayon libertarians at CNET get it wrong, and Harold Feld at TOTSF gets it right.

This is a change, and while it seems minor at least to the folks at CNET, it’s not.

Specifically, it ammends the FCC act of 1934 and adds a specific goal for the regulators at the FCC:

by adopting and enforcing baseline protections to guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoratism for, or degredation of, operators based upon its source, ownership or destination on the Internet.

In addition, this explicitly gives the FCC authority over “information services”, and eliminates the argument that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 stripped this authority.

Go read the whole post.

Democrats seek to narrow secrets law

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An update on my earlier post on the state secrets privilige.

Well now the Senate Judiciary Committee is working on actual legislation requiring that the Judge be given evidence of an actual proof of a state secret before granting such a motion.

The states secret privilege has been abused for many years, and in fact the original case establishing the privilege, United States v. Reynolds, was an abuse of the privilege, as it was revealed there were no secrets involved.

Pelosi Showing Some Backbone

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Holy crap. She is calling Shrub’s bluff.

On the House Vote on FISA

February 13th, 2008 by Speaker Pelosi

All Members of Congress fully understand and support our responsibility to protect the American people and the need for the President, the Congress, and policymakers to have the best possible intelligence to fight terrorism.

On Friday, a surveillance law insisted upon by the President last August will expire. Today, an overwhelming majority of House Democrats voted to extend that law for three weeks so that agreement could be reached with the Senate on a better version of that law. The President and House Republicans refused to support the extension and therefore will bear the responsibility should any adverse national consequences result.

However, even if the Protect America Act expires later this week, the American people can be confident that our country remains safe and strong. Every order entered under the law can remain in effect for 12 months from the date it was issued.

Furthermore, the underlying Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for the surveillance of terrorists and provides that in emergencies surveillance can begin without warrant, remains intact and available to our intelligence agencies. Unlike last August, the FISA court has no backlog of cases, and thus can issue necessary court orders for surveillance immediately.

Conyers’ Being Innundated With Calls Calling for Impeachment

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The report of this is here:

Congressman John Conyers’ telephone, by many reports, rang endlessly on Monday, approximately 60 times per minute, or as fast as people could get through. The same thing appears to be happening today (Tuesday).

It needs to be on the table. 202-225-5126, fax: 202-225-0072,Conyers’ Judiciary Committee office: 202-225-3951, his Detroit, Mich., office: 313-961-5670, his Trenton, Mich., office: 734-675-4084.

Russia Rules Out Punitive Actions Against Kosovo

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The Russians believe that a declaration of independence is a bad thing, but they have ruled out sanctions against Kosovo.

This is a very positive development. One of the political imperatives in Russia is that it sees itself as a “Protector of the Slavs”, particularly those who subscribe to Orthodox Christianity, such as the Serbs.

They are behaving moderately because they recognize reality, and because, despite what the “very sensible people” in Washington say, Russia is not looking at reestablishing the USSR or the Warsaw Pact.

Their hostility toward the current path in US policy is because they feel that US policy is hostile towards them.

Negative Ads May Be Hitting Dem Primary Soon

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The WSJ has a report that some of Clinton’s big donors may run their own ads.

Theoretically, the law can make this very difficult, but since the FEC currently lacks quorum, there is no enforcement mechanism.

When people start running their own ads like this, they tend to go negative, so I’m predicting that this is going to get nasty in the next few weeks.

Hopefully, I’m wrong, which I almost always am, but I fear that I’m not.

Economics Update

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The Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority will stop making loans under the Michigan Alternative Student Loan, because it cannot raise money in the capital markets to lend out. You can see their notice here

Student loans are about as safe as it gets. You cannot discharge them through bankruptcy, and they are very safe, but no one is willing to buy the paper, both because the bond insurers are basically belly up, and because no one trusts anything.

In a similar vein, though more directly related to the bursting housing bubble, Freddie Mac cut nearly in half the size of its REMIC (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits) issue, because it cannot find buyers.

And in the useful congressional hearings area, i.e. not Roger Clemens and steroids, we have hearings on the collapse of the bond insurers.

In another sign of a slowing economy, media company Belo corporation is showing a loss.

Part of this may be the fact that, and I speak from experience having experienced their flagship Dallas Morning News, that Belo is to journalism what Osama bin Laden is to wet t-shirt contests. When you have a crappy product, you get hammered.