Focus Group Leadership

Karl Rove wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal today about the White House’s fixation on Rush Limbaugh. Buried in the story is this gem: Clues might be found in the revelation that senior White House staff meet for two hours each Wednesday evening to digest their latest polling and focus-group research. I would bet a steak dinner at Morton's in Chicago these Wednesday Night Meetings discussed growing public opposition to spending, omnibus pork, more bailout money for banks and car companies, and new taxes on energy, work and capital. Running the country based on opinion polls rather from core principles leads to major policy zigzags that demonstrate a lack of resolve. Clinton’s precipitous withdrawal from Mogadishu, Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident and the brutal videos that followed, gave Osama bin Laden the impression the USA didn’t have a backbone. And in the case of the new administration, it isn’t just a zigzag, it’s a complete 180. Drudge carried these screaming red ledes just 24 hours after the latest Wednesday evening confab. DIRE EMERGENCY CANCELLED: Obama Declares: Economic crisis 'not as bad as we think'... Retail sales not as bad as feared... From now on, look for Thursday to be the day for major policy change.

Car vs. Bus, Surprise

The private automobile has been the target of liberals for as long as I can remember. In the seventies they attacked cars for causing urban congestion. So they cancelled major freeway improvements into cities to discourage cars, with predictable results: more congestion. Next it was pollution, so the manufacturers developed technology to satisfy the 95% plus reduction of pollutants. Problem solved? No, just a new target, this time fuel economy and resultant carbon dioxide. At a certain point it becomes obvious they just don’t like cars, and by constantly moving the goal posts back, they can keep the pressure on to make it more difficult if not impossible to own one.

Why the hatred for the automobile? Probably because it has been such a liberating factor for the middle class. It allowed them to move out of fetid, corrupt cities to the suburbs and still have the ability to access work and shopping. It allowed them to travel economically where and when they wanted, unfettered by the constraints of public transportation. Yet it is public transportation that they want us to use. Public transit varies in quality and comfort. Nothing can prepare a non-New Yorker for the shock of an MTA subway at rush hour. It is one of the most demeaning experiences you can imagine. Jammed together with strangers, there are times you wonder when the person next to you last took a shower. Women hold their handbags under their arms protecting them. Subways are noisy and unsteady.

On the other hand Washington DC’s Metro and San Francisco’ BART provide quality transportation. But still nothing compares with being able to drive yourself from your home to your destination and not have to worry about timetables, transfers or your safety. Most, if not all transit systems operate at a loss. New York City recently debated whether they should raise fares to reduce a two billion dollar deficit to one billion. In Lee County, Florida where I live, the county government dropped a bus route aimed mainly at tourists traveling to the beach. The math was simple. It cost $6 per passenger to operate the system and a ticket costs $1.

Buses are backbone of urban transit systems. It is assumed because of their passenger capacity and diesel engine they are more fuel efficient per passenger mile than a car. But is that true? Buses operate at maximum capacity inbound in the morning rush hour. But they deadhead back almost empty. They sit with their engines idling to heat them in the winter and cool them in the summer. They operate with very few passengers in the off hours.

Recently the US Department of Transportation published a study of energy use for various modes of transportation. Surprisingly the automobile is very close to bus transit in energy efficiency, with the bus only 8% more efficient per passenger mile. Based on the most recent figures (2006) a bus uses 3,262 Btu per passenger mile, while a passenger car uses 3,525. Not enough difference to pry my hands off my steering wheel.

Parkinson’s Law revisited

Probably the most underappreciated business adminstration analyst was C. Northcote Parkinson, author of Parkinson’s Law. It states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” But that is an overly simplistic take on his genius. He noticed that despite the reduction of the number of ships in the British Navy, the number of civilian employees and bureaucrats working for the Navy actually increased. Between 1914 and 1928 the number of Capital ships declined from 62 to 20, and the number of Navy officers and men from 146,000 to 100,000. Yet the number of dockyard workers increased by 10%, the number of dockyard officials and clerks by 40% and the number of Admiralty officials by a whopping 78%. He goes on to explain why there is inevitable employee creep that is totally independent of the amount of work needed. The most significant is called The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates reprinted here:

To comprehend Factor I, we must picture a civil servant called A who finds himself overworked. Whether this overwork is real or imaginary is immaterial; but we should observe, in passing, that A's sensation (or illusion) might easily result from his own decreasing energy-a normal symptom of middle age.

For this real or imagined overwork there are, broadly speaking, three possible remedies: (1) He may resign. (2) He may ask to halve the work with a colleague called B. (3) He may demand the assistance of two subordinates to be called C and D. There is probably no instance in civil service history of A choosing any but the third alternative. By resignation he would lose his pension rights. By having B appointed, on his own level in the hierarchy, he would merely bring in a rival for promotion to W's vacancy when W (at long last) retires. So A would rather have C and D, junior men, below him. They will add to his consequence; and, by dividing the work into two categories, as between C and D, he will have the merit of being the only man who comprehends them both. It is essential to realize, at this point, that C and D are, as it were, inseparable. To appoint C alone would have been impossible. Why? Because C, if by himself, would divide the work with A and so assume almost the equal status which has been refused in the first instance to B; a status the more emphasized if C is A's only possible successor.

Subordinates must thus number two or more, each being kept in order by fear of the other's promotion. When C complains in turn of being overworked (as he certainly will) A will, with the concurrence of C, advise the appointment only by advising the appointment of two more assistants to help D, whose position is much the same. With this recruitment of E, F, G and H, the promotion of A is now practically certain.

Never in my newspaper career, most of which was in management, was Parkinson ever mentioned. Not in any training courses, not in any discussion groups. Yet his theory nails the most fundamental principal for cost control of the most expensive component in business, payroll. While he takes shots at government civil servants, his criticism is equally valid for profit making companies. Perhaps it is because the gist of his concept is only 4 and a half pages long. You can read it here. He published a book containing Parkinson’s Law and other lectures he gave at the University of Singapore. It is well worth a read. Most libraries have it, and a paperback version is available through Amazon.com for under $10/used.

The turtles at Island Turtle

When I started this blog I looked for a name that would convey something about my new roots: that I live on a lovely, relatively unspoiled sub-tropical island on the southwest coast of Florida. Island Pundit and Island Hawk sounded too pretentious, so I decided on Island Turtle because it was whimsical nonsense, in the same vein as Little Green Footballs. I was lucky enough to find non-copyrighted clip art for my logo, which I really like. But I never thought I had a fascination with turtles, until I started cleaning up the house this afternoon for dinner guests. There in a corner of our bookcases was a collection of four turtles my wife and I accumulated over the years. The first and the third are my favorites. The black one was given to me by a co-worker who exchanged gifts with me and is a handicraft probably from the Solomon Islands, where she and her husband scuba dived. The third is from a gift shop at the main lodge at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was created by Jon Anderson from acrylic clay, using a technique called millifiori, which is too complicated to go into here, even if I did understand it. No paint or decals are used. The other two are of questionable origin, most likely from local Sanibel art fairs. The one problem I have had with the name Island Turtle is Google won’t direct you to this site. It doesn’t differentiate between Island Turtle and Turtle Island. And there are a gazillion Turtle Islands. It will lead you to this site if you use island turtle blog, island turtle blogspot or the single word islandturtle. Better yet, bookmark it.

The fallacy of wind power

The advocates of wind generation see it as free energy. The more the merrier. Most have no comprehension of how a grid works and what is needed to deliver reliable power to the end users. They don’t understand that when you turn on a light bulb or when a stamping plant in Michigan, using gobs of power, begins squeezing a body panel into shape, there must be enough electricity on line at that moment to satisfy demand. This is called the baseload, and is usually estimated a day in advance for various time periods. If the grid comes up short, voltage drops, turbines bog down and get out of phase. If more electricity isn’t put on line quickly, brownouts occur. If voltage drops below 107 volts, electric motors for air conditioners and refrigerators, for instance, can be damaged and the grid must access reserves or shed load. The grid’s system operator must maintain reserves at least the size of the largest generator on the grid, in case one goes down. Reserves can be supplied from the grid itself, from a neighboring grid or purchased on the day ahead spot market. Baseload power is supplied by low cost generating systems, most often nuclear and coal. Nuclear is generally operated at full power, shutting down only for maintenance, refueling and unscheduled outages. According to the government’s Energy Information Administration, nukes average 92% annual capacity load factor. More expensive electricity is brought on line as demand warrants. Wind power isn’t a good match for baseload management, but regulatory requirements mandate it be given priority. Wind has a problem. It is an intermittent source of electricity. It isn’t necessarily there when you need it. Here’s an example of 660 kW wind generator located at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy at Bourne. It reports current, daily, weekly, monthly and annual output data online in real time. Click here for current data from this very interesting website. Because of its intermittency, wind power must be backed up by conventional thermal power. This means fossil fueled plants can’t be dismantled as wind power capacity is put in place. There are just times when there is no wind over vast stretches of our country. Just after Al Gore made his energy speech last July, I checked the wind maps of the eastern US. There was no wind over 10 mph (the threshold for wind generation) anywhere on the east coast, and most areas were flat calm. Other than pumped water storage, there is no economical way to store this electricity. There are only 31 pumped storage facilities in the US and all their capacity is spoken for. The prospect for expanding that number is unlikely. If we wish to remain a competitive industrial nation, we must have reliable power at rates comparable to nations competing against us. An example is the aluminum industry. It takes 5 to 6 kWh of electricity to produce a pound of aluminum. Electricity is the most expensive component in the process of converting bauxite to alumina to metallic aluminum. The current market for aluminum is just under 60 cents a pound. To be competitive, US producers must have access to 5 cents/kWh or less electricity. And they must have it 24/7, not when the wind blows. Only nuclear and coal can do that. If we drive costs over that, production and jobs will move to China or Russia. The EU is facing the same problems and will delay cap and trade targets for their aluminum industry. Costs and reliability of our electricity must considered if we allow Asian competitors to continue their carbon emissions. All we will do is transfer our industries to them and world carbon emissions will remain the same.

NY Times tries to rehabilitate John McCain

If anyone wondered which John McCain would return to the Senate — the coalition-building dealmaker or the gloves-off bruiser from the campaign trail — the answer is now clear: both. -- NY Times 2/7/2009 Whoa! Gloves off bruiser? Where did that come from? I remember him calling Obama a very decent person. Quite frankly it was McCain’s wimpiness that cost him the election. When Sara Palin put some fire into the campaign, and poll numbers shot up, McCain toned her down and carefully scripted her speeches. He never brought up the Ayers connection, he never challenged Obama’s corrupt fund raising that allowed foreign citizens to contribute, he never branded Obama the Socialist he is. Right now the DNC and the White House are attempting to deny the Republican Party the leadership to effectively challenge for the Presidency in 2012. Through their media minions they tried to destroy Bobby Jindal after his State of the Union response, they continue attacks on Sarah Palin and they are attempting to marginalize private citizen Rush Limbaugh. And now the New York Times is attempting to rehabilitate Senator McCain. The last thing Republicans need is for McCain to be the front runner. When was the last time the Times operated in the best interests of Republicans? Beware of Pinches bearing gifts.

Obama, please save our savings before you save the world

For the many who didn’t take out second and third mortgages to pay for cruises or trips to Las Vegas, or try to live beyond their means; for the many who did put their hard earned money into 401Ks, IRAs or simply put money away for retirement or a rainy day, please save our savings before you save the world. You recently said you didn’t follow the ups and downs of the market. Well it has been consistently down for the past month. Decent people who have acted responsibly are being devastated. Uncertainty is the worst enemy of financial stability. And talk of $300 billion/year Cap and Trade taxes on our utilities, doubling of electrical rates, a trillion dollar/year health care plan, the threat of runaway inflation caused by trillion dollar deficits, these are the causes of the current financial instability. Slow down! Many of these problems have been with us for dozens of years. They can wait a bit. Shore up the banks but don’t force them to make risky loans. Above all, don’t allow judges to use whim in revaluing loans. If mark-to-market is a faulty valuation system for banks, try valuing a loan that that has no downside limits. Cramdown will create more doubt on the value of assets, and that’s precisely how we got into this mess in the first place. Put first things first. You have four years to get things done.

Three Great Lakes freeze over

Update: To follow these charts at their new location go to a more recent Island Turtle post here. Coinciding with the effort of the new administration’s efforts to fight global warming, we find three of the five Great Lakes are almost totally frozen over. Lake Erie is totally frozen, Superior about 98% and Huron about 85%. This is an extreme rarity. Perhaps the NY Times and Time Magazine were right in 1974. Perhaps we are entering the new Ice Age.

Is this drought emergency really necessary?

On Friday California’s Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared a drought emergency for the state. The cause: lack of rain in northern California, the normal source of water for arid southern California. What’s ironic is it’s quite possible there will be floods in the very area of concern in the next few days. Simultaneous flooding and drought? Only in California! Yet here’s the 5 day precipitation forecast and the area from Tahoe to San Francisco to the Oregon border is going to be deluged. The Goverantor of this ungovernable state will be asking municipalities to plan for 20% cuts in water usage. There is the distinct possibility of rationing similar to what occurred in the early nineties. Oh can we ever forget this call to conserve, ‘If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down?” What is sad is California has been slow to adopt the promising technology of reverse osmosis (RO) to supplement supplies of water, especially for the communities at the tail end of the water supply lines in coastal southern California. Yet this is precisely where it would be easiest to implement. Florida has similar wet and dry seasons (though at opposite times of year), with the same threats of drought. Tampa has built a 25 mgd RO plant to ensure sufficient supplies and the small island where I live, Sanibel, has a 5 mgd plant which supplies all the water needs to our 7,000 dwelling units. Of note is the efficiency gains of RO technology. RO plants of today need only 25% of the electricity of 20 years ago. Sanibel went 20 years without a water rate increase solely on these efficiency gains. California’s problem is there is always a constituency that finds it imperative that something not be done. Take this snippet on reverse osmosis from the Pacific Institute: "Our communities cannot be rushed into desalination projects -- the economic, environmental and social costs of desalination are too high," said Heather Cooley, lead author of the report. "Local, state, and national laws do not sufficiently protect our communities from costly mistakes." "While desalination can produce high-quality, reliable water, it can also have significant impacts on marine ecosystems," [Peter] Gleick [President of Pacific Institute] said. Marine organisms can be crushed against intake-pipe screens or sucked in and killed by the desalination process. Further, the discharge of the highly salty waste brine -- which is sometimes laced with processing chemicals and toxic metals -- can harm local fish populations and accumulate in the food chain. The Institute also finds that desalination can have impacts on community development. New water sources along the coast can lead to unanticipated and unplanned new growth along the coast. The main criticism of RO has been its high energy use. That could be valid if looked at only in the abstract. In reality the amount of electricity used to transport water from the Colorado River and northern California is not much different and sometimes less. In a 2007 interview with Sramana Mitra, an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994, HP Michelet said, "You don't have to go overseas to look at the critical aspects of desalination. It's enough to just go to California. We demonstrated that we could now, in California, desalinate a cubic meter of water for a total of 1.58 kilowatt hours. Colorado today spends about 1.9 kilowatt hours just to pump the state water around to California. In addition to that, about 1.6 kilowatt hours of additional energy is spent just to slush the Colorado River water around in California. When you look at all the energy being consumed by California today just by pumping water around, you realize that it is actually cheaper to desalinate water from the Pacific Ocean". And this from a VerdeXchange News interview: They've built a full-size, state of the art seawater desalting plant, and are operating it at Port Hueneme, just outside of Oxnard, California in order to demonstrate the actual cost of desalting seawater. Their goal was to show that the energy efficiency of modern seawater reverse osmosis systems had improved to the point where it actually consumes less energy than it takes to pump water in the State Water Project from Northern California to Southern California, and that it's very similar to what it costs to pump water from the Colorado River to Southern California. In fact, they finished their first run about a year ago and published their paper. Sure enough, the energy consumption for seawater R.O. was less than what it cost to pump water in the state water project, and just about the same as it is for the Colorado River Aqueduct. There’s nothing like a crisis to get Californians to face reality.

The Democrat solution, inflate our way out of debt?

This recent item from Bloomberg News caught my attention. Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said. Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said. Paul Volker was Federal Reserve Chairman during the Carter and Reagan years. He is a fiscal hawk as any Fed Chairman should be. That job, first and foremost, is to maintain the value and stability of the dollar. And he did that when inflation ran rampant in the seventies. Instead of the ill advised wage and price controls under Nixon and tepid Fed Funds and discount rate increases later, he took the bull by the horns and dramatically and mercilessly broke the back of stagflation of the Carter years by upping Fed Funds rates to 20% and holding them there. But he caused a recession and many Democrats think that caused the defeat of Carter in 1980. Inflation is a means of escaping debt, both personal and by government. But it comes at the price of a cheapened dollar. And I suspect that this is what the new administration is aiming to do. With endemic inflation, long term interest rates will climb sky high (the government can’t control them, they are market driven) slowing business growth, exacerbate inflation by upping the cost of imported goods, devastate those living on fixed incomes and kill any thought of maintaining a savings account. One only needs to look at the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe where in mid-January it issued a 100 trillion dollar note worth US $33. Yikes, at that rate we could pay off our national debt with your change from McDonalds. Democrats have traditionally been inflation friendly. In the years they controlled the House, especially in the Carter years, when inflation ran rampant (over 10% at times), they used bracket creep to raise taxes. Then at election time they magnanimously voted to "readjust" the brackets, billing it a tax cut. The cuts were all illusory. But they kept the Democrats in office. Reagan’s tax reform in the early eighties put an end to that game by indexing most tax rates. Fiscal and monetary irresponsibility will kill the dollar as an international currency. It will end our ability to sell our debt to foreign nations. It will put us in the category of Mexico, Argentina and Zimbabwe in international markets. The utter disregard of sound economic principles in the current stimulus bill is a giant step in that direction. Hang tough Paul Volker.

Deep Question

If Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, had to take a salary cut to $500,000, should high earners within GE and its subsidiary NBC be made to take the same pay level? Should Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News, and David Letterman of the Late Show do the same? Immelt’s total compensation for 2007 was $15.48 million, including salary, bonus, other (perks) and stock gains. Williams’ contract is a reportedly $10 million per year and Letteman’s $31 million. If Immelt’s pay is obscene, what about Williams’ and Letterman’s? Fortunately Immelt went to private sources (Warren Buffett) to borrow $3 billion for troubled GE Credit, not the government. Who says Fortune 500 CEOs are stupid?

"Only little people pay taxes"

“Only little people pay taxes.” – Leona Helmsly To that I might add, “and Democrats in high places when cornered.” We have had Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and HHS Secretary nominee Tom Daschle. And we had rumors of tax problems with potential Senator Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. That's a pretty long list in a short period of time. Tim Geithner should never have been confirmed, nor should be Tom Daschle. We can’t undo Geithner but we should take a better look at Daschle. Not only did he know about his tax problem in June, but he failed to act until discovered by the transition team in January. The very specific amounts of the value of the car and driver services appears to indicate a 1099 was filed and he ignored it, but we won’t know that unless asked by a committee member. But there are other items in Daschle’s past that throw doubt on his integrity. He allowed his wife to represent Boeing, while he was Senate Minority and Majority leader, and of course in a position to influence legislation on the Air Force Tanker program. This unusual lease back program was criticized by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office as being highly unfavorable to the government. It eventually blew up when it was discovered that the Air Force contracting officer had been offered a job by the CFO of Boeing during the selection process that chose Boeing over competitor Northrop Grumman/EADS. Both the contracting officer and the CFO served federal prison time for their misdeeds. While lobbying the Congress by a Senator’s spouse is not an ethics violation under the extraordinarily lax Senate rules, it certainly goes against the grain of accepted first world business practices. The other question is what the heck did Daschle do to warrant a million dollar a year salary from Leo Hindery? What were his duties as Chairman of the Advisory Committee of InterMedia? Sounds pretty vague. Who else was on the committee he chaired? Was this a “no show” job? A very uncurious press hasn’t even posed these questions, much less answered them. So much for “Hope and Change.”

Smoot-Hawley II

During the election cycle, Obama gave mixed signals on trade policy. After signaling the terms of NAFTA had to be altered, his representatives contended it was simply “political posturing” according to the Canadian Consul General in his memo to Ottawa. But organized labor wants its payback for its election support. And that means restrictive import policies. Both Senate and House versions of the Stimulus Bill contain a “Buy America” provision for all steel and other products used for infrastructure projects. It hasn’t taken long for the EU to react, as reported in the London Telegraph: The EU trade commissioner vowed to fight back after the bill passed in the House of Representatives late on Wednesday included a ban on most purchases of foreign steel and iron used in infrastructure projects. The Senate's version of the legislation, which will be debated early next week, goes even further, requiring that any projects related to the stimulus use only American-made equipment and goods. The inclusion of protectionist measures has quickly raised hackles in Europe. Catherine Ashton, the EU trade commissioner, said: "We are looking at the situation. The one thing we can be absolutely certain about, is if a bill is passed which prohibits the sale or purchase of European goods on American territory, that is something we will not stand idly by and ignore." It seems our Congress has a short memory. In 2002, Bush imposed tariffs on steel and steel products to fulfill a campaign promise. The EU and several Asian nations challenged them with the W.T.O. In a little over a year, in November 2003, the W.T.O ruled the tariffs were illegal and authorized $2 billion in retaliatory tariffs. Now here is where the EU did its homework. They have learned how to game the US political system. Instead of using a shotgun, they targeted each member of the House Ways and Means Committee. In each committee member’s district, they selected an industry for retaliation to create the maximum angst among a small but influential group. For Jerry Kleczka from Milwaukee it was a tariff in Harleys, for Mark Foley from south Florida it was orange juice, for Wally Herger of northern California, wines. It was a unique approach that brought pressure on Congress and the President to reverse the tariffs and he soon backed down. But tactics aside, trying to solve a banking crisis with protectionist measures is a recipe for disaster. It doesn’t help, it makes it worse. When we faced the problem once before, we tried to solve it with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Our trading partners of course retaliated. International trade dried up and the unemployment rate jumped from 7.8% to 25%. Writing in The NextRight, Allen Peel describes how this led us into the Depression. Despite these pleas and protests, Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley in to law and the goods imported from Europe alone decreased by half of what they were before the act. Also, there was a backlash where a number of other nations increased their tariffs on American goods. The other tax increase was in 1932 with a Democrat-led Congress and Hoover. This time, it raised the top marginal tax rate was raised from 25 percent on those making $100,000 or more to a top rate of 63 percent on those making $1,000,000 or more (by comparison, the rate on $100,000 to $149,999 was raised to 56 percent). On top of that, the corporate tax rate was increased from 12 to 13.75 percent (an increase of almost 15 percent). The end result was a jump in the unemployment rate from 7.8 percent in 1930 to 25.1 percent in 1933. It would not be until 1943 when the unemployment rate dropped below 10 percent. Smoot-Hawley didn’t work before, it won’t work now.

When is Islamic terrorism really terrorism? When Obama ascended to the throne.

One of the givens over the past seven years is the absolute avoidance of the word terrorist by the major wire services when associated with anything Islamic. Generally the term militant, extremist, activist or some other mild euphemism is used. Yet in the past two days there have been two articles that break this rule. The first is an AP article that ran in over 600 papers over the weekend about a 70s terrorist Khalid al-Jawary who has now served his prison term, and is about to be released. NEW YORK (AP) — In 1973, a young terrorist named Khalid Duhham Al-Jawary entered the United States and quickly began plotting an audacious attack in New York City. He built three powerful bombs — bombs powerful enough to kill, maim and destroy — and put them in rental cars scattered around town, near Israeli targets. It traces his travels and possible association with Black September, Yasser Arafat’s notorious terrorist organization. It concludes with an ominous prediction that he will continue his tradecraft when freed. …Once he's released, Al-Jawary will be handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and held until his deportation.It remains unclear where he'll go, largely because Al-Jawary's true identity remains in question — even to this day.Those who helped put Al-Jawary behind bars believe he'll pick up where he left off. The second article by AFP ran on France’s Channel 24 on January 26. It is a major break with AFP’s policy in that it not only brands Hamas as a terrorist organization, but it quotes an EU official who puts at least a portion of the blame on Hamas. A senior EU official touring Gaza on Monday blasted the "abominable" destruction in the enclave and said its "terrorist" Hamas rulers bear overwhelming responsibility for the war. "It is abominable, indescribable," Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, told reporters in Gaza after touring some of the worst-hit places of Israel's deadly 22-day assault on the territory. "At this time we have to also recall the overwhelming responsibility of Hamas," he said. "I intentionally say this here -- Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such." Somehow it is hard to believe this change in their style books and attitudes coming so close to Obama’s inauguration is totally coincidental. Where the wire services scrupulously avoided giving Bush cover in his aggressive pursuit of terrorism, they seem more than willing to change the rules for Obama. It is to be expected.

Credit Rating Service sees “Several Cities” without Daily Newspapers

A Chicago financial rating service is predicting several cities will have no newspapers by 2010. Editor and Publisher reports on a study recently released the Fitch Ratings that newspapers and newspaper groups will default on their debt in 2009 and be liquidated, leaving major cities without a daily newspaper. They cite McClatchy and Tribune in particular as being in serious jeopardy. Fitch rates the debt of two newspaper companies, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. as junk, with serious possibilities of default. It also assigns a negative outlook to both the companies and the newspaper sector, meaning their credit ratings are likely to deteriorate further. A debt rating service recently cut the NY Times’ rating to junk, while another said they would revaluate it in the near future. Aside from the chains, two individual papers appear to be in deep trouble. The Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer suffer the same problems, both recently purchased in highly leveraged deals by inexperienced publishers. There has been some wishful thinking in the newspaper industry that debt holders wouldn’t press the publishers if they defaulted because newspapers and their assets were unmarketable. Not likely. But the best evaluators of the financial condition of newspapers are the newsprint salesmen. They know to the day when each paper made its latest payment and how much they owe. Most are tight lipped to outsiders, but the newsprint companies compare notes among themselves. And they will be the ones to pull the plug first. In the newspaper business, the second and fourth quarters are the moneymakers, especially the fourth with the heavy Christmas push by the retailers. The first and third are the worst. If things go south, they will probably happen then.

The Cow Tax and Beano

Here is the latest from the EPA. They have issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking public comment on whether they should regulate greenhouse gas emissions (methane and CO2 among others). Up to now, they have been restricted to what we normally consider pollutants: toxic chemicals, particulate matter and even toxic dust and dirt from open pit mines. Essentially they have been regulating mechanical things, but their ability to regulate products naturally produced by animals and even humans, opens new doors to our faceless, non-elected bureaucrats. Would bureaucracies like the EPA want to enlarge their jurisdiction three or fourfold? You betcha! It is causing a major stir in the cattle industry which sees the potential costs of a cap and trade “cow tax” at $175 per dairy cow and $87.50 per beef cow. Flatulence of cattle has been a subject of both concern and amusement. Government funded studies are often treated with derision and conjure up mental pictures of methane sensors placed at the exhaust end of a cow, with PhD types copying the sensor data to their notebooks. In reality the multi-stomach, cud chewing cows emit most of their GHGs from the front end, not the rear. But it is a significant problem nevertheless, with cattle contributing 15 to 20% of atmospheric methane discharges worldwide. And methane is a far more potent GHG, 24 times that of CO2. Which brings me to Beano. I consider Beano to be one of the top 25 inventions of the 20th century, right alongside of television, nuclear fission, radar and the Veg-O-Matic. And it works. The active ingredient, the enzyme alpha-galactosidase, affects digestion by prematurely breaking down certain legume sugars before they reach the large intestine where they would normally ferment and produce gas. Knowing that, about two years ago I decided I would save the planet. I went to Beano’s website where I found a “contact us” box. Had more to do with customers’ problems with Beano, but I asked my missive be forwarded to the appropriate department. In it, I pointed out the problem with bovine flatulence, that perhaps Beano could provide a breakthrough solution, that Beano could be sold by the ton around the world rather than in little bottles, and that they (GlaxoSmithKline) might make a gazillion dollars. But I waited and waited for a response. Finally after three weeks, my answer came. They informed me that they did not make Beano for veterinary use and because of that, my request was denied. So much for thinking outside the box (or bottle) at GlaxoSmithKline.

The cancer of piracy

There have been 14 piracy attempts off the east coast of Africa and the Gulf of Aden in the past 10 days. It is obvious it has gotten out of hand. The trend is getting worse and will spread to other areas unless the civilized world can get a handle on it soon. Once confined to the Gulf of Aden and the near coastal waters off of Somalia, the seizure of Saudi owned super tanker Sirius Star 450 miles offshore demonstrates almost no area of the Indian Ocean is safe. Complicating this is the common practice of paying ransom to the pirates. This only exacerbates the problem by guaranteeing them profitability. And the typical European weenie attitude isn’t helping either. According to the Times of London, the British Foreign Office recently advised the Royal Navy that they shouldn’t detain pirates because “it may breach their human rights” and “also risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.” Other countries simply have no taste for prosecuting and incarcerating these threats to maritime safety. The Italians, never known for their backbone, released Abu Abbas, ringleader of the Achille Lauro hijacking, after his plane was forced down in Italy by US fighter planes. It will take a lot more than setting up a NATO, or worse yet, an EU naval force to take care of the problem. Each European country wants to set its own rules of engagement or authorize the use of force on an individual incident basis. At a moment when a pirate boat is within yards of a freighter with grappling hooks, you don’t have time to call a ministers’ conference in Germany or France to deal with it. Here are a few suggestions: 1. Develop the resolve for what needs to be done. Use of deadly force must be authorized in advance. On the scene commanders are the ones who must call the shots, not Prime Ministers. Countries who don’t want to play by these rules should be excluded. 2. Develop a plan, including a legal framework, for what will be done with captured pirates. Right now, in theory, under the International Law of the Sea, the capturing country may try the prisoners in their own country or turn them over to another for trial, unless they permit torture or otherwise violate human rights (death penalty). That of course excludes the US. This will be the main sticking point. Europeans simply don’t want to be stuck with the liability of Muslim pirates in their jurisdictions, and the consequences of their release. 3. Use the intelligence assets we have. The same techniques we use to find, identify and track Al Qaida terrorists in Iraq can be used here. Pirates communicate. There is no way they just stumbled on the Sirius Star or the Ukrainian vessel Faina, carrying 33 T-72 tanks. They were given sailing their orders by someone, and they didn’t come by snail mail. Identify the pirates' mother ships. Board them when they hit international waters. Or simply make them disappear. Or both. 4. Consider the use of convoys. There are over 18,000 ships using the Suez Canal, that transit the piracy prone Gulf of Aden each year. That’s 50 a day. There are not enough warships to escort each one. During both World Wars, the best defense against submarines was the convoy system. There, 8 to 12 escorts would provide protection for 45 to 60 transports. Initially the merchant skippers disdained them, preferring to take their chances going solo. They didn’t like having to wait for a convoy to form up, or having to reduce speed to match the slowest vessel. But it turned out be the most effective protection, especially early in WWII. 5. Insurance companies must get involved. They, at minimum, should require ship’s crews to have training in repelling boarders. Some techniques already being used effectively are fairly simple, such as high pressure water hoses. Posting watches using night vision and FLIR devices and 24/7 radar watches while in the danger zone would help. But as we found during WWII, naval gun crews proved far more effective than merchant mariners in providing defense. Whether civilian contractors such as Blackwater or NATO marines, dedicated forces would do a better job than lightly trained ship’s crew. The cancer of piracy will spread if nothing is done. It is spreading already. It will spread into the Red Sea and the Med. At some point civilized nations will have to act. The sooner the better.

Living with dinosaurs

Well not actually, but alligators are among their nearest living relatives. Having them as neighbors takes some getting used to. Sort of like hurricanes. While they are dangerous, they are nothing like the crocodiles shown on TV documentaries. They don’t run after you, despite urban legends to the contrary. They aren’t very bright, but they do like a lot of the things we humans enjoy too. Their three desires are: They like to eat, the like to sit in the sun all day (helps them digest their food) and they like the company of the opposite sex, if you know what I mean. That’s about all. Did I say they aren’t very bright? 

During the seventies, alligator hunting was banned. That hurt a lot of Florida “crackers” who made some extra money selling the hides and meat. Government authorities were warned there would be a population explosion and an inevitable conflict with the burgeoning human population. And that did happen, first with pets, mainly dogs and later with attacks on humans. The state of Florida eventually allowed the “culling” of alligators over 4 feet in an effort to placate the alligators’ uneasy neighbors. But on eco-friendly Sanibel, where I live, the attitude was “They were here first,” we should learn to live with them. Sanibel went several steps beyond the state. Only 8 footers (small monster size) were eligible for “culling” and only if they were determined to be threatening.

I live on a golf course, the Dunes, that is mostly lakes and an alligator heaven. In one humorous incident about 10 years ago a lady called the county police about a monster 13 footer she said was behaving aggressively. The county police arrived and dispatched the gator post-haste. Only one problem, this was “Big Al,” a fixture at the Dunes and beloved by many. City Council threw a hissy fit and mandated that only gator friendly city police be involved in the future. But in short order the alligators began misbehaving. An 81 year old environmental activist and contributor to the local paper, was walking his dog near some open water. The dog apparently started yipping at a gator. The gator naturally went after the dog and the owner tried to intervene. Big mistake and he didn’t survive. Two other incidents occurred 3 years later, one fatal and the other with a woman pretty well mauled.

Now we are a popular resort island and for some reason alligator attacks seem to play well in out of town papers. That gets the local Chamber of Commerce all out of joint. Anyway, business interests got the better of things, and now anything over 4 feet is now eligible for “trapping” if anyone thinks an alligator is aggressive. And trapping means it will be served as an hors d’oeuvre in some fancy Midwest restaurant and the remainder will end up as Gucci handbag. 

Most of the alligator aggressiveness comes from the actions of well meaning people who feed them. Alligators are normally fearful of humans and will retreat from an encounter as fast as the human. But when fed, they lose their fear of humans. When a gator snuzzles you it’s a lot different from a dog. And a lot more dangerous. In reality the human’s act of friendship will turn out to be a death warrant for the gator.

Whither the Big 3

Democrats are going to do what they do best, throw money at a problem. They are proposing $25 billion in loans to the Big 3. No doubt there will be strings attached, big, long strings. What the Democrats priorities are will determine whether the domestic auto industry survives or not. Most likely it will be to save as many UAW jobs as possible. While that sounds great, the last thing the Big 3 needs is more UAW workers. Nor do they need an auto czar to micromanage what cars are produced or mandate or forbid sales of certain models. Despite Democrats desires, the big three as well as Toyota and Nissan made gobs of money off of SUVs. That’s where the market was. And the survival of the industry rests more from what people will buy, than what is politically correct to manufacture. Throwing money around subverts the UAW and industry’s need to face economic realities. Just like a recent auction of a real estate development where the distressed seller opted out of the auction price because he felt he could make more from government largesse, there is no incentive for the UAW to reduce costs. Uncle Sam will prop them up. While many place the blame on Big 3’s management for agreeing to untenable UAW demands, that is simply hogwash. If you have ever experienced the whipsaw tactics of unions, you would understand. With your competitors operating, very few companies can withstand a two or three month strike. Not only will you permanently lose market share, you are bled dry by fixed costs. It becomes a choice of going out of business now or postponing it for 5 years. Most bet on waiting for a miracle. Congress has been pushing for a merger between GM and Chrysler. You might ask why GM needs Chrysler. Surely they don’t need more assembly plants. Surely they don’t need to fund the shortfall in Chrysler’s pension plan. Surely they don’t need to fund their retiree benefits. They have sufficient models. They don’t need Jeep when the have GMC. It is a lose-lose proposition. The best solution is for GM to file for bankruptcy. They need out of some of the more burdensome UAW work rules. Just like the airlines, companies after bankruptcy evolve into a leaner and more flexible operations. As far as the rest, their best bet is to find offshore partners. Ford probably can, but Chrysler most likely is toast no matter what happens.

The fix is in. The media’s iron wall of silence still prevails.

Four years ago when John Kerry was running for president, he got caught up in the Swift Boat controversy. He blamed his defeat on his failure to respond promptly and forcefully to the allegations. What was really at play here was he felt confident the story would be spiked by the MSM and never get legs. But that didn’t happen. Through conservative websites, Fox News and talk radio, the myth of war hero John Kerry was quickly demolished. The first to go was the Christmas in Cambodia fairy tale. Here Kerry blamed President Nixon for ordering him into Cambodia during Christmas 1968. His oft repeated story was “etched in his memory.” Only problem, Nixon wasn’t President yet and couldn’t have ordered it. The iron wall of media silence cracked and the story did get legs.

Not so in 2008. When John McCain recently accused the NY Times of being an arm of the DNC, he just scratched the surface. Hot button stories, harmful to Obama, are simply ignored all over. When KMOV TV in St. Louis picked up on the fact St. Louis law enforcement officials were forming “truth squads” to actively challenge and prosecute “lies” by Obama opponents in political ads, the story went unreported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. When Missouri Republican Governor Blunt issued a strongly worded press release condemning the strong arm tactics, again the Post Dispatch ignored it. The most recent example is the handling of the Ayers/Obama connection. This has been a no-go area for the media up to recently. Now the NY Times has taken a new tack. It now publishes “whitewash” stories to preempt any valid criticism. Here’s an example from today’s Times.

Mr. McCain’s reference to Mr. Ayers’s desire to carry out more bombings was from an article in The New York Times, published by chance on Sept. 11, 2001, about Mr. Ayers and his memoir, “Fugitive Days.” The article opened with a quotation: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Three days later, Mr. Ayers wrote on his Web site that the meaning of his remarks had been distorted. Most of the bombings attributed to the Weathermen were meant to damage only property, but a 1970 pipe bombing in San Francisco attributed to the group killed a police officer and severely hurt another. Mr. Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lives in Mr. Obama’s neighborhood. He was named citizen of the year in Chicago in 1997, has worked with Mr. Obama on a schools project and a charitable board, and gave a house party when Mr. Obama was running for the State Senate.

This is laughable. McCain quotes the NY Times, and the Times tries to refute its own story by saying Ayers wrote on his own website it was distorted. Wow! This is almost as bad as the Washington Post calling McCain a liar (two Pinocchios) when he quoted a Post story word for word that former and discredited Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines was giving financial advice to the Obama campaign. I guess the lesson here is that the two leading papers consider themselves unreliable. The world is coming around.

How does the MSM maintain such discipline? Part of it is the liberal monoculture at the top levels of the news gathering organizations. You simply won’t get ahead as an aspiring reporter if you stray too far from the plantation. Rush Limbaugh has another take. He see evidence of “Democrat talking points” being shared and repeated by the networks. The most dramatic evidence of this was in August 2000, when network news commentators started accusing presidential hopeful George Bush of lacking “gravitas.” For a term used infrequently, according to Lexis Nexis, it began being used on news broadcasts hundreds of times a week. Rush now plays, almost daily, a montage of liberal catch phrases, simultaneously regurgitated by the MSM. His take is this is, it can’t be sheer coincidence and must be orchestrated. The only chinks in the MSM armor are a handful of papers and Fox News.

About a year an a half ago the DNC tried to marginalize holdout Fox by urging presidential hopefuls to boycott Fox's debate, co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. Bill Clinton’s blowup with Chris Wallace was another effort to accomplish it. Of course this failed when Hillary appeared on O’Reilly in May in an attempt to rescue her failing effort for the nomination.

How do we stop this biased coverage? There is no magic bullet. But remember the liberal media is populated with big egos. They go berserk when their integrity is challenged. So challenge their integrity. Write letters to the editor with valid points and document them. Patrick Frey at Patterico’s Pontifications has an ongoing open correspondence with the reader’s representative of the LA Times. He points out conflicts of interest by reporters, questions the airbrushing of stories, and challenges the accuracy of many. When the LA Times fails to respond, he writes about it on his blog. At the end of the year he publishes a compendium of misdeeds at the Times, which he refers to as the dog trainer. Subscribe to a conservative competitor. If you live in the Washington DC area, subscribe to the Examiner or the Washington Times.

Fox News became an instant success when CNN didn’t provide unbiased coverage and conservatives flocked to them. Don’t patronize those who provide consistently inaccurate or slanted news. Share your thoughts with others. By the end of October we will learn how much damage the newspapers have done to themselves. That’s when the Audit Bureau of Circulation releases the latest 6 month figures for newspapers. Based on the most recent reports, it’s not going to be pretty. Also by then the NY Times will have released its Q3 revenue and earnings (or lack thereof) figures.