Hiring during Gregoire's "hiring freeze"

Gregoire calls it a hiring freeze - hiring 1700 more state employees. Not all are union members.

The Olympian

... The paperwork piles up so quickly, officials justified another hiring exemption just to process the forms. That exemption - one of 39 for the governor and her budget office - allowed OFM to change Duane's position. In her new job, she spends about half her time processing freeze exemptions.

After all, you have to keep hiring during a Gregoire hiring freeze.

Obama exempts his buddies from ObamaCare

Obama forces his healthcare dream on you and me. But it's requirements are too onerous for his buddies. So he exempts them. This is cronyism. Special favors for the favored.

Washington Times

Backroom deals and cover-ups may be business as usual for Washington, but understanding why the Obama administration protects its friends from Obamacare offers special insight into what the purveyors of the mandate themselves think about their own law. This is key: The waivers aren’t meant to protect victims from unintended consequences of Obamacare; they are meant to exempt them from the very intentional increased costs of health insurance that the law causes. 

Under Section 2711 of the Public Health Service Act, Obamacare increases the annual cap of insurance benefits, which sounds great - as does everything else in big government - until the bill comes due, in this case, in the form of higher insurance premiums.

In short, the administration has decided that you will face increased health insurance premiums, but special friends in the unions will not.

Bai Tong - best Thai restaurant

My friends can be proud. They got a big recognition by Seattle Met Magazine - best restaurant among the dozens and dozens of Thai restaurants.

Seattle Met Magazine

Bai Tong has locations in Redmond/Bellevue and Southcenter.

China has big problems

Gordon Change has been following China. China has big problems. It is a strange combination of wealth and poverty. Its per capita GNP is a small fraction of ours.

China's government is fragile. It is very centralized and inflexible, which leads to being broken - shattered. He wrote an entire book on it:

The Coming Collapse of China

He also has a blog at Forbes.

Terrible idea - state bank of WA

Everything they do wrong will be multiplied with this idea: State Bank of Washington

Liberty Live

School districts managed their money then Gregoire grabbed it

School districts have to maintain a reserve in their budgets for a "rainy day" and to preserve their bond rating when they borrow. They have to fight to maintain this reserve. There have even been strikes when school employee unions tried to get the reserve money. So? Well, they say "no good deed goes unpunished." Christine Gregoire took it. She was desperately looking for money. So Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn helped her to force the school districts to eat into their reserve. In her one-day special session of the legislature on December 11, 2010, one of the few things they passed was a reduction in school funding that was retroactive to 1/1/2010 - over eleven (11) months back. Five months of the funding had already been spent spent in the 2009-10 school year. The rest was for the level committed to in the school year started in September. Three months of that were already spent, but all of it committed. How do you manage your budget when money is taken away eleven months after you spent it? You are forced to use up your hard-gained reserve. Source: Bob Hughes, member of State Board of Education Also State Line

What the media hid during Obama's SOU speech

Zoom your TV cameras out just a little. What do you see?

"In God We Trust" is above the speaker's rostrum. Wonder why it's engraved in the stone!

Credit to Dennis Prager

Massive March for Life in DC

The news media didn't notice it Monday January 24, 2011. ABC? NBC? CNN? Didn't notice several hundred thousand people? Before the march they warned about traffic and busy trains. Hometown Annapolis

D.C. March for Life expected to crowd trains

But no news about the massive number of people who participated. And people who were there say the crowd is pretty young.


Click photo to enlarge.

King tides January 21 to 24

The highest tides of the winter. Many people's property are threatened when these high tides are combined with the low pressure and the wind-driven waves of a storm. But some people get damage from the tide alone. They should be making plans to correct their situation.

Our waterfront property doesn't have this problem - with or without a storm. At least the cabin doesn't. We have had minor erosion behind our bulkhead in past storms.

Look at water in yards, parks and over roadways; the latter in La Connor and Port Orchard. On January 22 most of the photos were dates 1/21/11 or 1/22/11. Someone has named the highest tides of the year "king tides."

Wash Dept. Ecology

P.S. I got a very good view of a mature bald eagle at sunrise in Lake Forest Park this morning. He landed high in a cottonwood tree half a block from Bothell Way NE aka Highway 522.

GE Rent seeker vs. competitiveness

Obama will appoint Jefrey Immelt of GE to head his "jobs" panel. Immelt is certainly the wrong person to help create jobs for you and me. But he is the right person for Obama because he put aside trying to be competitive in the open field to do his playing on Obama's field of favoritism. Economists call this activity by business "rent seeking" This is like when Obama called out Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm on his end-the-recession effort because she is an expert in recessions. She sure is an expert: While she was governor Michigan had its own recession when the rest of the US was booming. Wall Street Journal GE has a long track record of innovation in products and processes - for being very competitive. But Immelt has reoriented GE to get sweet deals from the government. Why else would Obama like him? Immelt is playing by Obama's rules. Marc Gunther tells about how GE has changed: [quoting] GE’s Washington operation is a case study in Washington’s revolving door. Nancy Dorn, who runs the office, worked for Dick Cheney at the Pentagon and the White House and was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget during Bush II. At OMB, she suceeded Sean O’Keefe, who became NASA administrator and is now vice president, Washington operations, for GE Aviation. GE also has Linda Hall Daschle, wife of former Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle, lobbying on its behalf. Meanwhile, Mr. Daschle is on the board of advisors to GE’s HealthyMagination initiative. Last summer, [2009] a leaked email from GE Vice Chairman John G. Rice, soliciting donation’s to GE political action committee, laid out the GE-DC connections. According to Steve Milloy, a right-of-center anti-environmentalist who obtained the email, Rice wrote:

The intersection between GE’s interests and government action is clearer than ever. GEPAC is an important tool that enables GE employees to collectively help support candidates who share the values and goals of GE. [emphasis added] On climate change, we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill…If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses. And so forth. You won’t be surprised to learn that GE’s “values and goals” were more aligned with Republicans betwen 2000 and 2008, when most of its donations went to the GOP. Now they mostly go to Democrats. To be sure, this business-as-usual in Washington, but it’s revealing.

[And Marc Gunther has much more.] WSJ

GE has high hopes for the [Washington] strategy. It says that over the next three years or so it could bring in as much as $192 billion from projects funded by governments around the globe, such as electric-grid modernization, renewable-energy generation and health-care technology upgrades.

Obama dictates end of secret union ballot

The unions couldn't force an end to secret ballots in representation elections (known as "card check" or Employee Forced Choice Act) through Congress. No problem. Obama will overrule Congress by decree. And his hand-picked National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will take it to court. Right Wing News ... Recently the NLRB announced its intentions to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah because those states had the gal to implement constitutional amendments to their state constitutions guaranteeing that workers have a right to a secret ballot in union elections. With this the Obama administration is moving to deny workers their right to a secret ballot, a right that has been sacrosanct in democracies for hundreds if not thousands of years. Why does Barack Obama want to take away the right to a secret ballot? Because his union pals don't want workers to feel safe voting against a union. How can the Obama administration justify its efforts to eliminate the centuries old right to a secret ballot election? Why, because Obama's regulatory agency wrote a new "rule" that says so, of course. You see the problem as Obama sees it is that Congress has not passed the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that would take away by law the right to a secret ballot. The reason Congress won't pass it is because our representatives and senators know that their voters don't support this idea. The failure of the EFCA to pass is the one plum that the Obama administration has not been able to give to its funders in Big Labor. So, because Congress won't act, Obama used his power to simply write new regulations to just take away the secret ballot by presidential fiat. And now his NLRB is about to start suing states to push his anti-democratic ideas. So what can we lovers of democracy do? We can call our representatives and tell them to support HR 1176, the Secret Ballot Protection Act. This bill would stop Obama's NLRB from taking way worker's right to a secret ballot. If you want to protect the ages old right to a secret ballot, tell your congressmen to support HR 1176.

Baltimore school CEO at Washington Policy Center this morning

Washington Policy Center's Education Breakfast - Update at bottom WPC had a good crowd at the Seattle Westin Hotel this morning for their breakfast featuring Baltimore CEO of schools Dr. Andres A. Alfonso. They spent little time on prelims - just a short video overview of their activities - so they could give the time to Dr. Alfonso. He immigrated from Cuba when he was 12, went to public schools in New Jersey, then Harvard Law School, then a career change to education with a Dr. of Education. After serving as #2 in the New York City schools he went to Baltimore three years ago. His first school board meeting was picketed and the unions had a vote of "no confidence" before schools started! His big sin? Calling for collaborative planning. But that was an aside. He arrived with a track record of success in getting changes in NYC. He was schocked to learn that Baltimore's enrollment was declining by over 3% per year. Some of that might be the population aging, but most of it was families leaving and kids dropping out. He set out to work with the Baltimore educators to find ways to turn around that enrollment decline. He repeatedly emphasized "having a conversation" His changes got more resources to the kids who needed them - to prevent dropouts, etc. And he gave the principals more control over the resources in their schools. But this was not a positive sum situation. When one school gained $1 million another lost - maybe as much. He also reorganized central services to be more responsive. He didn't get much into how they (not he) reallocated their resources, but we were given a WPC Policy Note by Liv Finney that describes "Fair Student Funding" which did the redirection. Fair Student Funding involves empowering the school principal and giving him/her control over most of the budget and the people who work in the school. Aside: Some of those "conversations" must have been arm wrestling… How is he doing? The enrollment decline ended the first year and growth has returned. Test scores are up, drop outs are down. Due to the limited time he showed only a few slides of his presentation. You can view or download the entire presentation at WPC [PDF]. Update: Speaking with Bob Hughes, a member of the State Board of Education who attended, he pointed out some things. First, Dr. Alfonso said that teachers get ten days of inservice training per year, which is a lot. Hughes says that that much training makes a big difference: it is treating the teachers as professionals and it improves their classroom skills. Second, Alfonso's presentation shows charts of student performance on state assessments over six years. Student performance was climbing before Alfonso arrived. Credit for him for showing this: he gets credit, but not all of it.

Brand-new lighthouse in Washington

Light houses have been closing for the past almost 100 years. But there is a new one. And this is not a 15-foot skeleton, but what anyone would say is a lighthouse.

In my old home town of Kennewick, Washington, on the Columbia River in Eastern Washington. On Clover Island, it is about 62 feet tall.

Tri-City Herald

Some say it is the first new one since 1962. I doubt that. But still...

Via Visit Every City in Washington

Photo from Lighthouses of the US

My blog software choked

Slow blogging because my once-excellent blogging S/w won't save a post and therefore won't put any thing. ARGH

5-mile ride for surfers in Alaska

Yes. Five miles. I love Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage. Take a look at it in Google Earth. It is a long arm with huge, mostly brown mountains on both sides for miles. It has the right long, narrow enough shape for tidal bores to form. A tidal bore is the tide coming in fast enough that you cannot outrun it, given that you are on sand or rocks on the tidal flat. So it makes sense that a surfer might be able to ride it. They are doing it. This is a beautiful piece of film that includes both close-up and aerial shots: Surf on Grind TV Here is more details from the same people: SurfAlaska

Time for correction from Stephanopoulos, NY Time, Wash Post and CNN

Many media people rushed to judgment on the Tucson shootings - they the murderer was motivated by right-wing radio talk. They were wrong. Jared Lee Loughner was not political and did not listen to news radio or TV. He was mentally ill. Where are the corrections? Daily Caller

ABC News host George Stephanopoulos refuses to admit fault or issue a correction for implying politics had something to do with accused Tucson tragedy shooter Jared Lee Loughner’s motives. On ABC’s “This Week,” Stephanopoulos, a former Democratic White House press secretary, asked Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat: “The rhetoric definitely got ratcheted up all thousand [sic] the course of the campaign. Going forward, what do you think you, other members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans and the like can do to help bring the temperature down?” When The Daily Caller asked Stephanopoulos if he would air a correction for the error, he asked, “What’s false in that question?” ... TheDC also asked the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN if they were going to run corrections for the mistakes their reporters, anchors and columnists made. An editorial page assistant at the New York Times said it was up to columnist Paul Krugman whether he was going to run a correction for his mistakes. Krugman asserted that the Tea Party movement factored into Loughner’s shooting of Giffords and 19 other people on Saturday. The Post and CNN failed to respond to TheDC’s requests for comment.

Snow in 49 states

This is why Al Gore is a saint. Global warming has now caused snow in 49 states today.

Photo map from Telegraph UK. Click to enlarge. The link also has reporting about NY City's big snow and where Mayor Bloomberg was during the mess.

Snow for almost everyone

Snow across the country and frigid weather down to south Texas and Louisiana.


Map from Wunderground.com. Click to enlarge

Atheists don't have no songs

Steve Martin: A bit of humor about atheists at YouTube

Removing the trucking barrier to trade

Obambi is going to turn around and stop violating the trade agreements with our third-largest trading partner, Mexico. He changed. Only because he lost the 2010 election. The Republican gains in Congress make the difference. Investors Business Daily

That's a good thing, because it will restore U.S. trade ties with our third-largest trading partner to normal. And it won't be tough for Mexico to measure up. Contrary to common perception, legal Mexican trucks have consistently passed U.S. safety inspections, outperforming even U.S. trucks. Since 2003, just 1.2% of Mexican truck drivers on U.S. roads were not out of compliance; for American drivers, the figure is 7%. As much as the Obama administration may tout the tiny changes in the truck program as real improvements, it's window-dressing. The new program is pretty much the same one that Congress, in a fit of protectionist pique, halted in 2008. What changed is Congress. Restoring the truck program will help restore U.S. trade to its normal pre-recession vigor, with a freer flow of goods and services between the U.S. and Mexico. It gives the U.S. a fighting chance of doubling exports in the next five years, one of President Obama's goals. For U.S. companies, that means transport costs will fall by some $400 million. They won't have to pay two trucking companies for a single shipment to Guadalajara, with all the added cost that entails. It will also make U.S. companies more competitive, because they'll be able to take better advantage of the shorter distances between factories and consumers and pass on the savings to consumers. This will be an advantage for both countries over their Asian rivals. Perhaps best of all, the truck program restoration opens the door to ending $2.4 billion in punitive tariffs that Mexico slapped on 99 U.S.-made products in retaliation for the truck shutdown. And it helps Mexico, too. Restoring the truck deal will help Mexican businesses at a time when some see the drug trade as their only opportunity. More U.S. goods there means more choices and more buying by Mexican consumers. So why was the truck program cut in the first place? Democrats did it as a favor to Big Labor. It should never have happened.

No evidence of Obama corruption? Here are seven Obama actions

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek was speechless. He stated that there was no evidence of corruption in the Obama administration. But young Tim Carney, a Washington Examiner columnist, immediately gave two: Newsbusters

• Ex Google lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin working as the No. 2 tech policy guy in the White House discussing net neutrality with Google lobbyists (registered and unregistered) while Google stood to profit from the administration's Net Neutrality rules.

• Former H&R Block CEO Mark Ernst being hired by Obama's IRS and then writing new regulations on tax prep -- regulations that H&R Block has endorsed, and that will help H&R Block.

This was on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan shows. And Carney later extended that list to seven corrupt Obama actions on his blog at Washington Examiner.

• Obama officials meeting off campus for official business for the sake of avoiding the Presidential Records Act.

• And this nugget from the same NYTimes piece: "Two lobbyists also cited instances in which the White House had suggested that a job candidate be “deregistered” as a lobbyist in Senate records to avoid violating the administration’s hiring restrictions."

• The firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. As my colleague Byron York has explained: "The method of Walpin's firing could be a violation of the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which requires the president to give Congress 30 days' notice, plus an explanation of cause, before firing an inspector general."

• Giving a car company (Chrysler) to a political entity that spent millions to get you elected. This deal involved alleged threats by a since-indicted car czar to knee-cap investors who didn't want to agree to the White House's deal.

Kudos to Tim Carney!!

Rep. Inslee is confused about the US Constitution

Honorable Jay Inslee made a big fuss about the reading of the US Constitution in the House of Representatives Thursday. He had a question: Which version of the Constitution would be read? Seattle Times He was complaining about "... edited, redacted and incomplete version..." And he couched it in very friendly language. They read the version of the Constitution that he, Honorable Jay Inslee, swore to uphold the day before. He should be up on it since he swore that oath on January 5, 2011. Bothell Reporter Did he complain then? Apparently he wanted a history lesson of all the original text and the amendments to show the dirty laundry of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The floor of Congress is not the place for the history lesson. But it is the place to keep in mind the Constitution that rules - is supposed to rule - their proceedings. The Constitution as amended. History And he needs a history lesson. He joined the chorus about slaves being counted as 3/5 of a person. That was a compromise. The slave states wanted full counting of slaves when determining representation; the abolitionists wanted zero. There were so many slaves that full counting would give the slave states a very large say in running the US, which would prevent the needed changes. The states like Massachusetts wanted to end slavery. Not allowing the slave states control would make it more possible. But there would be no United States of America unless all the thirteen colonies agreed and 3/5 was the compromise that made it possible. When they were able to end slavery they removed the 3/5 and gave former slaves full representation.

Obama opposes -- opposed -- increasing US debt limit

Obama now proposes raising the US debt ceiling. Four years ago he opposed it. He said it was a result of leadership failure.

The Corner The Corner

Obama: Not Always a Fan of Upping Debt Ceiling - National Review Online

I posted this with the Drudge app's interface to Blogger. Oh my, the editing window was less than two lines. Very hard to work with.

Company follows greens' law. Greens fight company

The greens got the voters to approve I-937 in 2006 which requires renewable energy sources provide an increased portion of Washington's electricity. So a company is taking steps to follow the law's requirements. Adage announced a biomass power plant near Shelton and expects to create 400 jobs.

So the greens are fighting tooth and nail against Adage developing a new "renewable" power source as their law requires. First they attacked the enforcer Olympic Region Clean Air Agency (ORCAA). The Olympian reported that they glued the locks shut and threw a brick through a window.

Why do they put their dream in law then attack those obey the law?

They claim that the biomass plant will cause CO2 emissions. Wrong. Biomass energy is CO2 neutral because long-term decomposition releases the same amount of CO2 as burning. And burning it produces energy and reduces the need for another energy source that releases CO2.

They claim acid rain. But Evergreen Freedom Foundation says:

... The EPA tracks acid rain causing emissions. You can see the amounts of sulfur and nitrogen measured by the EPA here. Both levels are extremely low - some of the lowest in the nation. As for smog, the EPA reports there were exactly zero (0) unhealthy days for "asthma and other lung disease" in Mason County in all of 2009.

Particulate matter? We have laws for that! Don't you know?

Gordon Lance, the engineer for the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency assigned to determine if the project meets EPA air quality standards, said "The only way the application will be approved is if Adage meets the air quality standards."

Explain that to me. Why do they put their dream in law then attack those obey the law? And even those who enforce it?

Malthusians lose bet for higher oil price

Are we running out of fossil fuels and minerals? Will we use them up and be grounded next year? Or in ten years? The answer is "Yes. Obviously" to the followers of Malthus.

Prof Paul Erlich of Stanford University predicted starvation around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. He said was obvious that India would not be able to feed 200 million more people. But India's population of 400 million in 1960 has tripled.

Prof Julian Simon took Ehrlich on. He bet that natural resources used in industry would get cheaper over the years. He challenged Ehrlich to put up real money. In 1980 they bet $1,000 and Ehrlich got to choose the resources. He chose a group of five minerals. In 1990 when the bet was up Simon won easily. Not only was the group lower in price, but each mineral in it was cheaper.

John Tierney of the New York Times took up the mantle of Julian Simon, who died in 1998, and challenged for a bet that the price of oil would not sky rocket. Matthew R. Simmons worked in the oil industry and knew better. They made a bet to be decided on January 1, 2011, and the Malthusian lost again.

Here is John Tierney's update in NY Times:

Five years ago, Matthew R. Simmons and I bet $5,000. It was a wager about the future of energy supplies — a Malthusian pessimist versus a Cornucopian optimist — and now the day of reckoning is nigh: Jan. 1, 2011.

The bet was occasioned by a cover article in August 2005 in The New York Times Magazine titled “The Breaking Point.” It featured predictions of soaring oil prices from Mr. Simmons, who was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the head of a Houston investment bank specializing in the energy industry, and the author of “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.”

I called Mr. Simmons to discuss a bet. To his credit — and unlike some other Malthusians — he was eager to back his predictions with cash. He expected the price of oil, then about $65 a barrel, to more than triple in the next five years, even after adjusting for inflation. He offered to bet $5,000 that the average price of oil over the course of 2010 would be at least $200 a barrel in 2005 dollars.

I took him up on it, not because I knew much about Saudi oil production or the other “peak oil” arguments that global production was headed downward. I was just following a rule learned from a mentor and a friend, the economist Julian L. Simon. ...

... When I found a new bettor in 2005, the first person I told was Julian’s widow, Rita Simon, a public affairs professor at American University. She was so happy to see Julian’s tradition continue that she wanted to share the bet with me, so we each ended up each putting $2,500 against Mr. Simmons’s $5,000.

Just as Mr. Simmons predicted, oil prices did soar well beyond $65. With the global economy booming in the summer of 2008, the price of a barrel of oil reached $145. American foreign-policy experts called for policies to secure access to this increasingly scarce resource; environmentalists advocated crash programs to reduce dependence on fossil fuels; companies producing power from wind and other alternative energies rushed to expand capacity.

When the global recession hit in the fall of 2008, the price plummeted below $50, but at the end of that year Mr. Simmons was quoted in The Baltimore Sun sounding confident. When Jay Hancock, a Sun financial columnist, asked if he was having any second thoughts about the wager, Mr. Simmons replied: “God, no. We bet on the average price in 2010. That’s an eternity from now.”

The past year the price has rebounded, but the average for 2010 has been just under $80, which is the equivalent of about $71 in 2005 dollars — a little higher than the $65 at the time of our bet, but far below the $200 threshold set by Mr. Simmons.

What lesson do we draw from this? I’d hoped to let Mr. Simmons give his view, but I’m very sorry to report that he died in August, at the age of 67. The colleagues handling his affairs reviewed the numbers last week and declared that Mr. Simmons’s $5,000 should be awarded to me and to Rita Simon on Jan. 1 ...

The greatest country

What is the greatest country? Let's limit ourselves to the era of national states - the last 400 years. There is a second place, but no third.

Rich Lowry at NRO

... Britain? Getting warmer. It invented the rights that are the bedrock of liberal democracy. More than most European powers, it lived by Adam Smith’s formula for prosperity: “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” From a tiny island, it came to govern an enormous extent of the globe in a relatively benign colonialism. It was a bulwark against the dictatorships of the Continent, from Napoleon, to the Kaiser, to Hitler. And it spawned the countries that have made the English-speaking world a synonym for good governance and liberty: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and America.
Which brings us to the U.S. We had the advantage of jumping off from the achievement of the British. We founded our nation upon self-evident truths about the rights of man, even if our conduct hasn’t always matched them. We pushed aside Spain and Mexico in muscling across the continent, but brought order and liberty in our wake. Our treatment of the Indians was appalling, but par for the course in the context of the time. It took centuries of mistreatment of blacks before we finally heeded our own ideals.

The positive side of the ledger, though, is immense: We got constitutional government to work on a scale no one had thought possible; made ourselves a haven of liberty for the world’s peoples; and created a fluid, open society. We amassed unbelievable wealth, and spread it widely. Internationally, we wielded our overwhelming military and industrial power as a benevolent hegemon. We led the coalitions against the ideological empires of the 20th century and protected the global commons. We remain the world’s sole superpower, looked to by most of the world as a leader distinctly better than any of the alternatives.

Read the whole thing for the also-rans.

Slow blogging

My blog software is not hooking up to Google's Blogger, slowing me down. And Ecto is having trouble saving my posts, as well.