WiFi in OR for Productivity

The largest WiFi "cloud" is in rural Oregon. 700 square miles of eastern Oregon has continuous wireless access. This is the area of Umatilla and Hermiston, Oregon. It's where the Columbia River becomes the border between Washington and Oregon. I am very familiar with the area, having lived the first 10 years of my life 25 miles away in Richland and Kennewick, Washington. But why there? There are only 11,000 people there. Sure, it's nice to be able to web surf on a deserted road in semi-desert country. So? There are a bunch of remote applications that are valuable and companies and government agencies are paying for. Breitbart carries the Associated Press story:

While his service is free to the general public, Ziari is recovering the investment through contracts with more than 30 city and county agencies, as well as big farms such as Hale's, whose onion empire supplies over two-thirds of the red onions used by the Subway sandwich chain. Morrow County, for instance, pays $180,000 a year for Ziari's service. Each client, he said, pays not only for yearly access to the cloud but also for specialized applications such as a program that allows local officials to check parking meters remotely. "Internet service is only a small part of it. The same wireless system is used for surveillance, for intelligent traffic system, for intelligent transportation, for telemedicine and for distance education," said Ziari, who immigrated to the United States from the tiny Iranian town of Shahi on the Caspian Sea. It's revolutionizing the way business is conducted in this former frontier town. "Outside the cloud, I can't even get DSL," said Hale. "When I'm inside it, I can take a picture of one of my onions, plug it into my laptop and send it to the Subway guys in San Diego and say, 'Here's a picture of my crop.'"

Productivity!! .... And about the technology. The WiFi we have in our homes has a range of 30 feet or so, more with an antenna, but still not very far. For longer distances there is "Wi-Max," which makes the rural coverage practical.

Iraq - their Constitution - Good News

The big story is that the people of Iraq are rid of their murderous dictator and now they are adopting their own constitution. Is it obvious? The people, male and female, have a say about their government. It is a government of the people! The news media aren't saying much about it. But this is huge. They control their own collective future. Knight-Ridder reports:

JADIDAH, Iraq - Mohammed Hamed al-Obadi doesn't like the proposed constitution that Iraqis will vote up or down on Saturday. When he walks through the dusty streets of his Sunni Muslim neighborhood, very few people have much good to say about it. But, unanimously, they agree they'll vote to make it law. "It's time for the Sunni people to get involved in the democratic process," said the 50-year-old son of a Sunni tribal sheik. "We boycotted the vote last January, and we lost because of it. This time, we must show our support for one Iraq by approving this constitution, then we must make it work for us, from the inside." That attitude, to the extent that it's shared by other members of Iraq's Sunni minority, suggests a hopeful turn in Iraq's struggling democracy. Sunnis, roughly 20 percent of the population, were in control of the country under Saddam Hussein and they're now the backbone of the insurgency. U.S. and Iraqi leaders hope that broad Sunni participation in the constitutional vote and subsequent parliamentary elections will sap support for the insurgents.

Yes, this vote undercuts the Islamist murderers. Especially the votes of the Sunnis.

The French discover "petrole contre nourriture"

The United Nations' Iraq Oil for Food program is huge. Saddam Hussein was allowed to control billions of dollars that was supposed to feed his people; he was able buy almost anyting. And he was allowed to control people - to buy influence - with the money. It is clear that Kofi Annan allowed this misuse of the program. His highest diplomat Benon Sevan was involved. Kofi's son was involved. Now a high French displomat has been arrested. Claudia Rossett reports in the National Review.

Even the French have finally discovered the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal. With the arrest in Paris this week of a former French ambassador to the U.N., Jean-Bernard Merimee, alleged to have received illicit and lucrative contracts to buy oil from Saddam Hussein's U.N.-sanctioned regime, the French newspapers are now aflutter over "petrole contre nourriture." The funny thing is, while France had plenty to do with Oil-for-Food, Merimee's main trail leads not to the Quai d'Orsay, but to the doorstep of the U.N. secretary general.

Rossett has done an outstanding job on this. It is by far the largest scandal ever in the humanitarian area. No one paid attention. But Rossett, working for the Wall Street Journal, kept following the crumbs without a big story for years. Then she fouhd the cake! Don't pay attention to the Pulitzer prize awards. They passed her over in favor of some reporter scandalizing President Bush. And why are we US taxpayers paying to keep corrupt Kofi in office?

Religion of Peace?

Someone is counting and you won't believe the numbers. Islam extremists are killing people every day in many countries. You can't blame George Bush for this. The bombings in Iraq count, because they are done by Islamists intending to disrupt the conversion of Iraq from a ditactatorship to a democracy. But even taking out Iraq there are killings every day. Some days multiple lethal attacks. In the past 2 days there were attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Phillipines. The list for the past year must have 1,000 attacks. Many attacks are against Christians or secular people. But some are within factions of Islam. Algeria is 99 plus per cent Muslim. But look at this:

On May 15, 2005 in Khenchela, Algeria all eleven members of a water supply convoy are blown up or machine-gunned by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.... On May 9 in Chakka, India - The Mujahideen open fire on civilians exiting a mosque, killing three and injuring an unknown number.

These were Muslims killing Muslims. Look at the list for the past 365 days. It is astonishing. Update. 10/14/05 - Thailand The BBC reports that Thailand has major problem. Their southern provinces that adjoin Malaysia are being attacked by Islamists and killed almost every day.

The continuing unrest in Thailand's Muslim-majority south has led to the deaths of about 950 people since the beginning of 2004, and shows no signs of abating.

950 deaths in less than 2 years; that's an average of about 2 people every day!

Some of the insurgents blamed for a spiral of violence in southern Thailand were trained in Libya, a senior Thai defence official has claimed. General Pallop Pinmanee said the militants then used this training to teach many others in the south. But Thailand's defence minister said there was still no concrete evidence any insurgents had been trained abroad.

Does China have too many People?

China has viciously attacked the growth of its population during the past 20 years, I guess. The "One Child" policy has been vigorously carried out. Women have to report monthly. They have IUDs forcibly inserted and an Xray every 3 months to make sure it is still in. And forced abortions for violators. So China dodged the feared population bullet, right? But China is on a program of economic growth. And the two policies have collided. A shortage of labor is emerging in some industries in some parts of China. Even the government's Xinhua News Agency says so:

China’s population is expected to peak at 1.44 billion by 2033 while the labor population is expected to no longer increase by 2011. However, the peak time came much earlier than expected thanks to that [sic] the national policy of family planning has worked and that the old-age population grow. As a result, the decline of the increase rate of the labor population has materialized in recent years. Statistics show the proportion of jobs and job hunters is increasing year by year in 117 cities nationwide, climbing as much as 95 percent in the second quarter in 2005 when compared with 65 percent in the first quarter of 2001. Xie believes the domestic labor force has already been driven from the stage of "limitless supply" into "limited surplus," and resulting labor supply gaps among some regions might occur throughout the country. Though employees consequently could receive higher pay, labor shortages may pose a new thorny problem, causing some economic growth slowdowns, Xie said.

Brian Schwartz at the American Thinker provides analysis:

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The Sun predicting earthquakes?

NASA has made significant progress in one area - predicting earthquakes? The Times of India reports that a correlation has been discovered between major earthquakes and sun spots. This is not to say that the sun spot causes an earthquake. Rather, that it triggers a situation that is on the razor edge and the earthquake results.

NEW DELHI: It may not be long before scientists start tracking "sunspots" to predict earthquakes, some hours before they hit seismologically-active areas. And a JNU professor and his team would be behind the scenes. The NASA and the European Geosciences Union have already put their stamp of approval on the sunspot hypothesis, which suggests that certain changes in the sun-earth environment affects the magnetic field of the earth that can trigger earthquakes in areas prone to it. ... This theory is a definite development in the field of earthquake prediction,"said Saumitra Mukherjee, associate professor, School of Environmental Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). NASA has allowed Mukherjee’s team access to their data free of cost to work on the theory. "These changes take place about 24-36 hours before the earthquake so they can definitely help predict it,"he said

NASA the dinosaur

NASA, the National Aeronautic and Spac Administration, has unveiled a bold plan to put men back on the Moon in 13 years - that's 2018. The first time took 9 years. Now with 40 years' experience and far more advanced knowledge and manufacturing, we will take 50% longer? But read the fine print. The Moon is a step on the way to Mars. Going to the Moon will really be test flights (Is traveling in space flying?) for the procedures and hardware to get to Mars. But, still, why so long? Lots of people are asking and some are saying: Don't wait for the dinosaur. Let's do it ourselves. Private space ventures are the cheetahs. They care less about how big the organization chart is focus on the goal. We have already seen Burt Rutan and Paul Allen;s Space Ship One fly into space twice in one week. And it was installed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum last week next to the Spirit of St. Louis. But their design concentrates on getting people to the edge of space, not to Earth orbit or beyone. But other entrepreneurs are aiming higher and their designs will be more suitable for earth orbit. (I need an example.) Holman Jenkins has good coverage in the Wall Street Journal. Subscription required, I am afraid.

NASA's moon plans are a budget bluff -- at best, a cipher for a space policy to be named later, once the political landscape has shifted and it will be possible finally to pull the plug on the shuttle, the space station and NASA's whole failing model of human spaceflight. What will cause this shift in the landscape? Successful private space endeavors -- which, despite setbacks, through trial and error and animal spirits, will begin to show that men and material can be moved off the earth and into orbit affordably by spreading the cost over many flights, routinely undertaken. Only then can the next stage of manned space exploration really start. Hence a powerful line of criticism aimed at NASA from the non-usual suspects. NASA's program has a "fundamental unseriousness about it," complains Rand Simberg, a former aerospace engineer, at his Web site Transterrestrial Musings. "A serious program would be based on a foundation of an

Discovery Institute and an Urban Legend

The “Wedge Document”: How Darwinist Paranoia Fueled an Urban Legend

I strongly support the Discovery Institute. Bruce Chapman and his crew do first-class work. The following is from Discovery and I quote it in full: In 1999 someone posted on the internet an early fundraising proposal for Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. Dubbed the “Wedge Document,” this proposal soon took on a life of its own, popping up in all sorts of places and eventually spawning what can only be called a giant urban legend. Among true-believers on the Darwinist fringe the document came to be viewed as evidence for a secret conspiracy to fuse religion with science and impose a theocracy. These claims were so outlandish that for a long time we simply ignored them. But because some credulous Darwinists seem willing to believe almost anything, we decided we should set the record straight. 1. The Background § In 1996 Discovery Institute established the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (now just the Center for Science & Culture). Its main functions were (1) to support research by scientists and other scholars who were critical of neo-Darwinism and by those who were developing the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design; and (2) to explore, in various ways, the multiple connections between science and culture. § To raise financial support for the Center, Discovery Institute prepared a fundraising proposal that explained the overall rationale for the Center and why a think tank like Discovery would want to start such an entity in the first place. Like most fundraising proposals, this one included a multi-year budget and a list of goals to be achieved. 2. The Rise of an Urban Legend § In 1999 a copy of this fundraising proposal was posted by someone on the internet. The document soon spread across the world wide web, gaining almost mythic status among some Darwinists. § That’s when members of the Darwinist fringe began saying rather loopy things. For example, one group claimed that the document supplied evidence of a frightening twenty-year master plan “to have religion control not only science, but also everyday life, laws, and education”! § Barbara Forrest, a Louisiana professor on the board of a group called the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, similarly championed the document as proof positive of a sinister conspiracy to abolish civil liberties and unify church and state. Forrest insisted that the document was “crucially important,” and she played up its supposed secrecy, claiming at one point that its “authenticity…has been neither affirmed nor denied by the Discovery Institute.” Poor Prof. Forrest—if she really wanted to know whether the document was authentic, all she had to do was ask. (She didn’t.) § There were lots of ironies as this urban legend began to grow, but Darwinist true-believers didn’t seem capable of appreciating them:

• Discovery Institute, the supposed mastermind of this “religious” conspiracy, was in fact a secular organization that sponsored programs on a wide array of issues, including mass transit, technology policy, the environment, and national defense.
• At the time the “Wedge Document” was being used by Darwinists to stoke fears about Christian theocracy, the Chairman of Discovery’s Board was Jewish, its President was an Episcopalian, and its various Fellows represented an eclectic range of religious views ranging from Roman Catholic to agnostic. It would have been news to them that they were all part of a fundamentalist cabal.
• Far from promoting a union between church and state, Discovery Institute sponsored for several years a seminar for college students that advocated religious liberty and the separation between church and state.

3. What the Document Actually Says § The best way to dispel the paranoia of the conspiracy-mongers is to actually look at the document in question. It simply doesn’t advocate the views they attribute to it. § First and foremost, and contrary to the hysterical claims of some Darwinists, this document does not attack “science” or the “scientific method.” In fact, it is pro-science. What the document critiques is “scientific materialism,” which is the abuse of genuine science by those who claim that science supports the unscientific philosophy of materialism. § Second, the document does not propose replacing “science” or the “scientific method” with “God” or “religion.” Instead, it supports a science that is “consonant” (i.e., harmonious) with theism, rather than hostile to it. To support a science that is “consonant” with religion is not to claim that religion and science are the same thing. They clearly aren’t. But it is to deny the claim of scientific materialists that science is somehow anti-religious. § Following are the document’s major points, which we still are happy to affirm: (1) “The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization is built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West’s greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.” As a historical matter, this statement happens to be true. The idea that humans are created in the image of God has had powerful positive cultural consequences. Only a member of a group with a name like the “New Orleans Secular Humanist Association” could find anything objectionable here. (By the way, isn’t it strange that a group supposedly promoting “theocracy” would praise “representative democracy” and “human rights”?) (2) “Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very throughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment.” This statement highlights one of the animating concerns of Discovery Institute as a public policy think tank. Leading nineteenth century intellectuals tried to hijack science to promote their own anti-religious agenda. This attempt to enlist science to support an anti-religious agenda continues to this day with Darwinists like Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, who boldly insists that Darwinism supports atheism. We continue to think that such claims are an abuse of genuine science, and that this abuse of real science has led to pernicious social consequences (such as the eugenics crusade pushed by Darwinist biologists early in the twentieth century). (3) “Discovery Institute’s Center... seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.” It wants to “reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” We admit it: We want to end the abuse of science by Darwinists like Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson who try to use science to debunk religion, and we want to provide support for scientists and philosophers who think that real science is actually “consonant with… theistic convictions.” Please note, however: “Consonant with” means “in harmony with.” It does not mean “same as.” Recent developments in physics, cosmology, biochemistry, and related sciences may lead to a new harmony between science and religion. But that doesn’t mean we think religion and science are the same thing. We don’t. (4) “Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to indoctrinate instead of persuade.” It is precisely because we are interested in encouraging intellectual exploration that the “Wedge Document” identified the “essential” component of its program as the support of scholarly “research, writing and publication.” The document makes clear that the primary goal of Discovery Institute’s program in this area is to support scholars so they can engage in research and publication Scholarship comes first. Accordingly, by far the largest program in the Center’s budget has been the awarding of research fellowships to biologists, philosophers of science, and other scholars to engage in research and writing. (5) “The best and truest research can languish unread and unused unless it is properly publicized.” It’s shocking but true—Discovery Institute actually promised to publicize the work of its scholars in the broader culture! What’s more, it wanted to engage Darwinists in academic debates at colleges and universities! We are happy to say that we still believe in vigorous and open discussion of our ideas, and we still do whatever we can to publicize the work of those we support. So much for the “secret” part of our supposed “conspiracy/” § A final thought: Don’t Darwinists have better ways to spend their time than inventing absurd conspiracy theories about their opponents? The longer Darwinists persist in spinning such urban legends, the more likely it is that fair-minded people will begin to question whether Darwinists know what they are talking about. To see the complete original text of the document and read a more detailed response go to: The Wedge Document: So What?

President Bush Chooses His Supreme Court Justices

Everyone knows someone who would be a better Supreme Court justice than Harriet Miers. Sorry to break the news, but it's not your job to make the appointments. It's the president's job. Sorry. What if we all beat the drum about better candidates and undercut Miers to the point she backs out? Will we then get our better candidate? No. We would get a worse one. Bush would be on the defensive and Chuckie Schumer, the honorable, would get to make the pick. Well, not quite, but close to it. So put away your crystal ball. Lorie Byrd, the PoliPundit says it very well:

If those opposed to Miers continue to speak out loudly (which is their right) and to claim that Bush lied (which I believe is just inaccurate) then maybe they will create some unease with the base. If they do, though, it will have been from the top down, rather than from the grassroots up. Maybe those opposed to the nomination will be successful in getting enough of the base to vote against Republicans in the 2006 and 2008 elections, or to just stay home. Do they think that we will then get better nominees, with Democrats in charge? Even those who hate this nomination, and hate Bush for making it, can’t really believe that. Can they?

And the ridiculous charge that Bush lied about what kind of person he would nominate:

I can understand those disappointed in this candidate, and those who believe Bush missed an opportunity. I can even understand, though I don’t agree with, those who believe Bush broke a promise. But to say Bush “lied” is to say that when he said he would nominate those in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, he secretly intended not to do so. This interpretation of the word “lie” is just wrong. It is wrong the same way it was wrong when used by those who say Bush lied about WMD. To say he lied then, would mean that when he said Saddam possessed WMD, that he really knew no WMD existed. Do we really have to revisit the definition of what a lie is with those on the conservative side of the aisle?

It is in our interest that President Bush succeed in getting Miers approved by the Senate and sitting on the Supreme Court. BTW, my best source for Supreme Court issues is Hugh Hewitt. I check Hugh every day.

News Misreporting Slowed Aid in NOLA

The news reports from New Orleans of multiple murders, rapes and other crimes in the Superdome and Convention Center during the flooding have been proven wrong. The murder count in the Superdome was zero. The reports of dozens of bodies stored in a freezer in the Superdome. Wrong. There were 6 bodies, 4 of natural causes, one suicide and one I don't recall, but it wasn't a murder. Why couldn't the Major Media get this one story correct? They were all there - the big TV networks, the 3 or 4 cable news networks, the major newspapers. They were all there, but they got it wrong. What was the effect? The Washington Post reports today that the delivery of aid was slowed. The news media hampered the rescue and relief efforts.

The sensational accounts delayed rescue and evacuation efforts already hampered by poor planning and a lack of coordination among local, state and federal agencies. People rushing to the Gulf Coast to fly rescue helicopters or to distribute food, water and other aid steeled themselves for battle.

Delaying aid is bad. But worse, much worse, the news made it seem that New Orleans evacuees were somehow dangerous:

In communities near and far, the seeds were planted that the victims of Katrina should be kept away, or at least handled with extreme caution.

Back to the poor reporting:

There was an unnerving amount of lawlessness, especially looting, in the streets of New Orleans after the hurricane. But many of the more salacious reports have not withstood close examination by government officials or the media. CNN reported repeatedly on Sept. 1, three days after Katrina ravaged New Orleans, that evacuations at the Superdome were suspended because "someone fired a shot at a helicopter." But Louisiana National Guard officials on the ground at the time now say that no helicopters came under attack and that evacuations were never stopped because of gunfire. Later that morning, during a briefing carried live on local radio and local and national television, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said, "We have gotten reports, but unconfirmed, of some of our deputies and sheriffs that have either been injured or killed." Of the thousands of law enforcement officials who converged on New Orleans, only one was shot. The wound to the leg was self-inflicted in a struggle, a spokesman for the Guard said last week. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that National Guard troops found 30 to 40 bodies decomposing inside a freezer in the convention center, including a girl whose throat was slashed. The newspaper quoted a member of the Arkansas National Guard, which was deployed in the building. Other news organizations then passed the information on. That, too, was untrue. On Monday, Bob Johannessen, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said that four bodies were found -- one was a gunshot victim. He said officials had no record of a dead girl with her throat cut.

Some media organizations are backing off - a little:

The Los Angeles Times said last week that its story about the evacuation of the Superdome "adopted a breathless tone." Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, said reporting was challenging because official sources -- in particular Compass, the police chief -- initially confirmed many of the things reported on the air. As more information has become available, Klein said, the network has corrected the record and highlighted the danger of swirling rumors. "We are ever vigilant about separating rumor from fact," Klein said. "This story is a good reminder of the need to do that."

But who will hold the media responsible for the damage done by their repeatedly reporting rumors that had no source and were not true? Who will hold the media responsible for the aid that was delayed due to their false reporting?

Bald Eagles in Suburbia

I saw two bald eagles 3 blocks from our home in Lake Forest Park, Washington. It's totally suburban. There is some habitat advantage - Lake Washington; across it is the entrance of the Sammamish Slough (so-called River); and two creeks cut through our neighborhood. Some pairs nest withing three miles. But there is also one of the busiest highways in the state of Washington, Bothell Way or state highway 522. Google Map - click on Satellite I was walking to our neighborhood shopping mall. As I approached Bothell Way I heard the high almost-screech sound. There were two of them circling each other right at the highway. I wish I had my camera. They stayed near and active for several minutes.

More Hurricanes? No

I covered James Glassman's analysis of historical hurricane activity here on August 31.

Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade [when they hit the US mainland]. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.

I made a chart of that data. Of course the current decade - which has no name yet, let's call it the 00s - is not yet half over. So I projected the data for it. Click on the chart to enlarge it. (Sorry it's not more legible - a hurried effort in Excel and Fireworks.) It is clear that the decades of the 70s, 80s and 90s has less strong hurricanes than usual. The 00s so far are on the higher side, but not any new extreme. So the number of strong hurricanes does not provide evidence that human activity has made the globe warmer.

British Dhimmitude - Ban Piglet

The British are bowing down to the Muslims in the worst way. They banned Piglet in West Midlands in the U.K. Dhimmitude is the way of getting along where you get along because you always put your gaze downward; you always give in. The British are starting to practice it. From The Sun

NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office — in case they offend Muslim staff. Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. Bosses acted after a Muslim complained about pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the council in the run-up to the Islamic festival of Ramadan. Muslims are barred from eating pork in the Koran and consider pigs unclean. Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: “It’s a tolerance of people’s beliefs.”

OK, Muslims don't eat pork. So don't make them eat pork. Clearly mark food packaging and they can avoid it. But banning Piglet? That's what they did. You want to think this is a joke, but it's not. The British are seriously caving.

Charles Murray - the Poor versus the Underclass

Charles Murray looks at the poverty we saw in New Orleans and raises the distinction between the poor and the underclass. Being poor means having low income and assets. The way out of poverty is well known - work. People who work do not remain poor. In the hurricane aftermath in New Orleans the poor did what they could to take care of themselves. But there were people who looted and women who didn't do what they could, but waited for someone else to provide for them. These people are the underclass. Murry covers this in the Wall Street Journal on 9/29. Here it is hosted at the American Enterprise Institute.

We in the better parts of town haven't had to deal with the underclass for many years, having successfully erected screens that keep them from troubling us. We no longer have to send our children to school with their children. Except in the most progressive cities, the homeless have been taken off the streets. And most importantly, we have dealt with crime. This has led to a curious paradox: falling crime and a growing underclass.

The big problem is unsocialized young men. The first mark is crime.

The underclass has been growing. The crime rate has been dropping for 13 years. But the proportion of young men who grow up unsocialized and who, given the opportunity, commit crimes, has not. A rough operational measure of criminality is the percentage of the population under correctional supervision. This is less sensitive to changes in correctional fashion than imprisonment rates, since people convicted of a crime get some sort of correctional supervision regardless of the political climate. When Ronald Reagan took office, 0.9% of the population was under correctional supervision. That figure has continued to rise. When crime began to fall in 1992, it stood at 1.9%. In 2003 it was 2.4%. Crime has dropped, but criminality has continued to rise

The other symptom of the underclass is young men who choose no to work.

Among black males ages 20-24, for example, the percentage who were not working or looking for work when the first numbers were gathered in 1954 was 9%. That figure grew during the 1960s and 1970s, stabilizing at around 20% during the 1980s. The proportion rose again, reaching 30% in 1999, a year when employers were frantically seeking workers for every level of job. The dropout rate among young white males is lower, but has been increasing faster than among blacks. These increases are not explained by changes in college enrollment or any other benign cause. Large numbers of healthy young men, at ages when labor force participation used to be close to universal, have dropped out.

Why has the underclass grown during this time of increasing prosperity?

In large part, I would argue, because the proportion of young males who have grown up without fathers has also risen relentlessly. The indicator here is the illegitimacy ratio--the percentage of live births that occur to single women. It was a minuscule 4% in the early 1950s, and it has risen substantially in every subsequent decade. The ratio reached the 25% milestone in 1988 and the 33% milestone in 1999. As of 2003, the figure was 35%--of all births, including whites. The black illegitimacy ratio in 2003 was 68%. By way of comparison: The illegitimacy ratio that caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to proclaim the breakdown of the black family in the early 1960s was 24%.

Does he think our government can improve this situation? Not by doing the things that have already failed - at huge expense.

Hurricane Katrina temporarily blew away the screens that we have erected to keep the underclass out of sight and out of mind. We are now to be treated to a flurry of government efforts from politicians who are shocked, shocked, by what they saw. What comes next is depressingly predictable. Five years from now, the official evaluations will report that there were no statistically significant differences between the subsequent lives of people who got the government help and the lives of people in a control group. Newspapers will not carry that story, because no one will be interested any longer. No one will be interested because we will have long since replaced the screens, and long since forgotten.

Private aid in Gulf Hurricane Relief

In Mississippi people have found a great difference in the major groups giving aid. The Salvation Army was there quickly. And their people knew what they were doing. The Wall Street Journal reports on page 1 Thursday

Then city officials and residents counted their blessings, thanking the dozens of volunteers who had arrived here after the storm and the donors who had sent money and supplies. People in the crowd saved their biggest applause for the Salvation Army. "They were the only ones here in the beginning," Eula Crowell, 57 years old, said after the meeting. She lost her house to the massive storm surge that inundated East Biloxi, where many of the city's poorest people live. For the past month, she has relied on the Salvation Army for water, hot meals, groceries and other basic goods. The group also gave her $50.

But the Red Cross received few accolades:

The American Red Cross was mentioned at the meeting too, but in a different way. "We want to know where the money is," Ms. Crowell said when she cornered a Red Cross official who attended the gathering. "All these people across America are giving money over the TV. I would tell them to put it back in their pocket." Across the hurricane disaster zone, stretching from Alabama to Texas, an unexpected and unintended rivalry has developed between the two nonprofit organizations most closely associated with the aftermath of calamity. Here in some of the poorest parts of Mississippi and much of the Gulf Coast, the Salvation Army is drawing praise for its swift arrival in the most distressed areas and clearly winning the hearts of desperate residents. To some people here, the Red Cross, under growing criticism for letting bureaucratic hurdles slow down aid in the disaster area, suffers by comparison.

The difference:

The Salvation Army is helped by its military-style structure, which is designed for rapid mobilization and which puts a premium on training people in advance to deal with disasters. It can draw on more than 65,000 employees in the U.S., nearly double the paid staff of the Red Cross. The Salvation Army's daily work in permanent shelters with the homeless and poor and with people trying to put their lives back together after an apartment fire or years of alcohol and drug abuse helps too. The organization's focus on alleviating human suffering in the name of Jesus Christ resonates in this section of the Bible Belt.

But with its money the Red Cross is doing a lot:

This past weekend, the organization housed 120,000 people in nearly 500 shelters across the country, split about evenly between people who evacuated for Katrina and Rita. The Red Cross is housing another 300,000 in hotels and has given 530,000 families some form of financial assistance.

While the Red Cross raises lots of money it seems to have an entitlement mind set, being "the" emergency relief provider of the establishment. They bring lots of money and hire people for the short term. But those people are green. While the quiet Salvation Army does more with less money. The WSJ link is an email link and should work until Thursday

Spending Restraint?

We can't write a blank check for Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Even if the famously corrupt politicians of Louisiana were bypassed and every dollar went for its intended purpose, we can't afford another $60 billion or $200 billion! The web effort to encourage cutting the pork has been substantial - see NZ Bear's Porkbusters - but ignored, as far as we know. Good News! There is a sign of life. In the US Senate, of all places. Bob Novak reports at Real Clear Politics.com

WASHINGTON -- The Senate was up to its old tricks Monday evening. It prepared to pass, without debate and under a procedure requiring unanimous consent, a federal infusion of $9 billion into state Medicaid programs under the pretext of Katrina relief. The bill, drafted in secret under bipartisan auspices, was stopped cold when Republican Sen. John Ensign voiced his objection. The bill's Democratic sponsors railed in outrage against Ensign, a 47-year-old first-termer from Las Vegas, Nev., who usually keeps a low profile. But he was not acting alone. Ensign belongs to, and, indeed, originated, a small group of Republicans who intend to stand guard on the Senate floor against such raids on the Treasury as Monday night's failure. The group includes Sen. John McCain, who long has tried to wean Republicans from ever greater federal spending but attracted little support from GOP colleagues until recently.

The bill they stopped - or delayed - was pork at its worst. You find a specific need that is widely accepted, then you put your own pet project on it.

The "emergency" Medicaid bill is a classic case of how government grows and spending soars. Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, concerned by health problems of evacuees in her state of Arkansas, introduced a bill increasing Medicaid funds to the states. The Senate Finance Committee's Republican chairman, Chuck Grassley, and its ranking Democrat, Max Baucus, drafted the scaled-down, $9 billion substitute and marked it for quick passage. No hearings, no debate, no trouble... Ensign noted that Congress had appropriated an extra $62 billion in the wake of Katrina. He pointed to the fact that the bill is a general Medicaid enrichment unrelated to hurricanes. It makes sure that 29 states scheduled for federal Medicaid cuts would be "held harmless" -- that is, would not suffer a reduction. That list is headed by $78 million in extra funds for Alaska.

The Alaska pork master, Don Young, is at it, even in the Senate! The two Republicans from South Carolina are on the team also - Lindey Graham - we are watching him - and Jim DeMint.

Democrats decline influence over court appointments

Our US Senator Cantwell announced that she will vote against John Roberts for Supreme Court Cheif Justice. Seattle Times I think she made a mistake and Senator Leahy of Vermont made a wise move by voting for him. Here is the letter I sent Senator Cantwell today:

Senator Cantwell, Justice Ginsburg got 96 votes in the US Senate. Not because the Republicans supported her positions on issues, but because she was qualified and the president chose her. Why aren't you Democrats as fair as the Republicans? You have shown that you will vote against any nominee of President Bush - even the most qualified. You have shown that you are an extremist. If Roberts had gotten a lot of Democrat votes you would have shown that you judged each individual. And you would have had some sway over future nominees. But since you will vote against anyone you have no influence over Bush. If you want Supreme Court justices that reflect your views then you had better win some elections. President Bush makes court choices, not you senators. Truly, Ron Hebron

Media Low Lights

Cindy Sheehan got a private interview with Senator McCain by lying. Lying. She got to see him because she said she had one of his constituents in her group, but she did not.

He said he might not have met with Sheehan had he known none of his constituents was in the group.

I include this under "media low lights" because she is the creation of the media. See National Review Online's Media Blog NBC supports lying reporters. This is Dan Rather PLUS. On MSNBC's Scarborough Country a Louisiana-based reporter Heath Allen said:

It’s the responsibility of the photojournalist to capture that and put it on television because those people at that point needed help no matter what was true, what was false, what was exaggerated.

And Dan Rather himself is still clinging to the lights, even though they were turned off. RadioBlogger has the transscript of Dan's interview with Marvin Kalb. Here is Duane's intro:

Elder abuse. Oh, sure. I could have come up with some clever title for the staged interview between Marvin Kalb and Dan Rather at George Washington University two nights ago. But after you read and hear these two ponderous dinosaurs talk about what is or isn't journalism, what is or isn't media, and what is or isn't reality with regards to the Bush National Guard story, I'm afraid the reaction in the blogosphere, especially on the conservative side, could easily be considered elder abuse. Want an example of Dan at his most vacuous? Here's 13 of them. If you want to be the Blogger of the Week and needed help, pick one of these and do some analysis.

NOLA - Watch Your Wallet

We need to and intend to rebuild New Orleans, Lousiana. But we have to be careful with our money because Louisiana has a long and wide history of corrupt politicians. John Fund in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal points out today:

In just the past generation, the Pelican State has had a governor, an attorney general, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted.

Only Arkansas could match that recent record. ;-) Even one of the levee boards was under investigation at the time Katrina hit. And just this summer:

As for New Orleans, no city in America would better serve its most vulnerable residents with a clean sweep of its institutions. Just this summer, associates of former mayor Marc Morial were indicted for alleged kickbacks involving public contracts. Last month the FBI raided the home and car of Rep. William Jefferson as part of a probe into allegations he had misused his office.

We have to have careful control of the funds we provide. We have to be sure the LA politicians don't pay each other off with our money. Is this partisan politics or reputable oversight?

Despite assurances from President Bush, "the government is fighting this war [on waste] with Civil War weapons, and we're just overwhelmed," Joshua Schwartz, co-director of the George Washington University Law School's procurement law program, told Knight Ridder. Democrats are already scoring political points. Rep. David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is lamenting the lack of accountability in the aid package. He is calling for "the beginning of some new thinking" on how to handle disaster relief.

Actually, I agree with the Democrat. But honorable Senator Landrieu will deck you if you interfere with her family's "right" to control most everything:

Indeed, many local officials are quick to attack any outsiders who question the local way of doing things. Sen. Landrieu is especially sensitive since politics is her family's business. Her father was mayor of New Orleans, her aunt sits on the city's school board, and her brother is the state's lieutenant governor. She did a passable imitation of the overwrought Aaron Brossard when she told ABC News that if President Bush utters any criticism of how local officials responded to the disaster "I might have to punch him--literally."

If the they send street fighters to the US Senate imagine what sort of politicians they are hiding at home.

France fighting declining population

France has looked the "benefits" of a stable or declining population in the eye and has concluded that the costs are higher than the benefits. France announced that women will be rewarded for having children this week. Deutsche Well reports:

They include an increased monthly grant for mothers who take time off work for a third baby. France has one of the highest birth rates in Europe. Of the 25 nations in the European Union, only Ireland's rate is higher.

The problem is not enough children to support the social welfare programs 10 years and more in the future. You can't have lavish benefits for everyone if there is not enough tax revenue to support them.

Evelyne Sullerot, one of France's leading sociologists, points out that France also has one of Europe's highest proportions of women in the workforce. She adds that more needs to be done to promote a balance between work and family life. "Things aren'’t going well in France. With 1.9 children per woman, we have one of the highest birth rates in Europe. But itÂ’s still not enough for us to reproduce our generations," said Sullerot.

And they see the requirement to work as reducing the birth rate.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the new measures were intended to "allow a better conciliation between professional and family life up to the child's majority." Under the proposals, a parent who takes time off from work for a third child will have the option of a boosted monthly pay-out of 750 euros ($915) for one year. Currently the figure is set at $500 available over three years. According to Hubert Brin, president of the National Union of Family Associations (UNAF), the increased payment is to encourage higher-earners to have a third child. The current rate is only attractive for couples on low incomes. But we have to encourage professionals with higher incomes to have babies," he said.

And how about other countries in Europe? Is this a trend?

Falling birth rates are a growing worry across the EU, with demographers predicting that large-scale immigration will be necessary in many countries in order to sustain the benefits enjoyed by a steadily aging population.

Dead voters in Sri Lanka

They intend to top Ron Sims's mismanagement of voting in King County. From the BBC: Tsunami dead to get voter cards

Sri Lanka is to send out voting cards for those people believed to have died in December's tsunami because it cannot be sure who survived. The country is holding its presidential election on 17 November. The election commission fears electoral fraud by people impersonating the dead, so the cards will be specially marked to show the voter is believed dead. Those that have survived will have to prove their identity. More than 30,000 died in the tsunami in Sri Lanka.

Yes. If we mailed voter registration cards to dead people we would have to be on the watch for people impersonating them. OK. They have a problem not knowing who lived and who died. Here is my idea. Make everyone register again. It is much harder for a dead person to impersonate a living one than for a living person to impersonate a dead one. ;-)

Distorted News on Sheehan

How do you make a pitiful showing of 30 people appear to be a crowd? This is the group of 30 people Cindy Sheehan attracted from throughout the 50 states of the US to march on the White House yesterday, September 21. Not much of a showing if you ask me. Confederate Yankee reports that all the major news media left out this one fact - only 30 people participated. PowerLine Blog

After a carefully stage-managed vigil by liberal PR firm Fenton Communications, and a pair of 3-week long national bus tours to drum up support for her cause, "Mother Sheehan" managed to bring with her just this tiny gaggle with her to the gates of the White House. The organizers backing her show hope to draw "tens of thousands" of fellow protestors this weekend, but if this sad crowd and last night's turnout of just 150 in New York are any indication, the fledging anti-war movement of Cindy Sheehan is all but dead.

And Getty Images, a top source of photos for professionals, carefully cropped each of the photos they are selling. It looks like a crowd when you close in on a handful and leave out the "panorama" showing all 30. Getty's 12 photos

Pay for NOLA by cutting pork spending

We need to rebuild the coastal area devastated by hurricane Katina - Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. But ee can't just "find" $200,000,000 to do it. Congress is irresponsible if it just throws the ball down the field by spending money out of thin air. Where are those dollars coming from? The Highway Bill passed by Congress this summer is filled with "highways to no where" - special little projects for one congressman to buy votes from his district. For one of the worst offenders and his "important" projects see Scott Glabe at Weekly Standard - "Old Don Young Had a Farm"

"DON YOUNG'S WAY" is a $231 million bridge to be built in Anchorage. Don Young's "way" is to use his position as chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to bring home as many federal dollars as possible for his home state. For instance, the highway bill passed at the end of July netted over $1 billion in special projects for Alaska. That's $1,448 in pork for every man, woman, and child in Alaska. Young's eponymous bridge isn't even the most egregious bit of largesse. That honor goes to another bridge, which, for $223 million will connect Ketchikan, population 8,000, with Gravina Island, population 50. The Gravina Island Bridge, which is slated to be taller than the Brooklyn Bridge, will be a towering monument to unnecessity; the small island is already served by ferries, one of which departs every half hour. Young claims the bridge will facilitate Ketchikan's growth by providing ground access to the airport on Gravina Island, a rationale that is sure to be mentioned in a "documentary about infrastructure that demonstrates advancements in Alaska, the last frontier," to which the highway bill allots another $3 million. Perhaps the documentary will also explain how an airport with fewer than 10 flights a day can facilitate such growth, or why the government simply doesn't purchase a Lear Jet for every inhabitant of Gravina Island--which, as Citizens Against Government Waste has noted, would be cheaper than the bridge.

OK. Let's do something about this. N.Z. Bear is running a pork-identification project--with a powerful assist from Glenn Reynolds--in which bloggers point out federal spending that could be cut to balance out the costs of Katrina reconstruction. It's a great idea, and it has a nice logo: We can help. Find a wasteful project in your state or - best - congressional district. Then go to Porkbusters and enter it.

Violating the Constitution in New Orleans

While looters were shooting at them the police made the situation less safe. Did the police need the help and cooperation of law-abiding citizens? Yes, they needed them. But the police refused them. The police violated the Constitution of the United States by confiscating the legal weapons of law-abiding people. But they didn't take guns from the criminals. So they made the situation less safe. By what authority did they do this? None. What they did was illegal. Dimitri Vassarlos of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has this one liner:

Businesses selling bumper stickers that read "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" also should offer one with the rejoinder "We told you so."

Update. See also Gun Owners of America Update. 9/24/05 The police now have to obey the Constitution because a "higher authority" requires them to; a federal judge issued a restraining order. Why they were exempt before I dont' know. In The Houston Chronicle

In documents filed in federal court in Baton Rouge, La., New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Police Chief Eddie Compass and St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain deny ordering the confiscation of firearms. But news reports quoted Compass as saying that only law enforcement officials would be allowed to have firearms and Deputy Chief Warren Riley as saying, "We are going to take all the weapons."

And we saw what they said on those news reports.

Blair Kills Kyoto at Clinton's Summit

UK PRime Minister Tony Blair stood on stage with Bill Clinton and announced that the UK will not be bound by the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming. Why would Blair do such a thing? Because he does not want to send his country backward; he refuses to kill all economic development in the UK. James Pinkerton at TechCentralStation.com has the story:

"My thinking has changed in the past three or four years." So what does he think now? "No country," he declared, "is going to cut its growth." That is, no country is going to allow the Kyoto treaty, or any other such global-warming treaty, to crimp -- some say cripple -- its economy. Looking ahead to future climate-change negotiations, Blair said of such fast-growing countries as India and China, "They're not going to start negotiating another treaty like Kyoto." India and China, of course, weren't covered by Kyoto in the first place, which was one of the fatal flaws in the treaty.

The US Senate voted 95 to 0 to reject the Kyoto treaty if developing countries were excluded and they were. And he was looking to the future:

But now Blair is acknowledging the obvious: that after the current Kyoto treaty -- which the US never acceded to -- expires in 2012, there's not going to be another worldwide deal like it. So what will happen instead? Blair answered: "What countries will do is work together to develop the science and technology….There is no way that we are going to tackle this problem unless we develop the science and technology to do it." Bingo! That's what eco-realists have been saying all along, of course -- that the only feasible way to deal with the issue of greenhouse gases and global warming is through technological breakthroughs, not draconian cutbacks.

Now he's talking my language. Trying to promote growth instead of agreeing to quotas that can only be met by shutting down industry and requiring people to stop driving. Rather, let's work on technology that can reduce the emissions we are concerned about. Isn't it fitting that Blair did it at the conference Bill Clinton put on to showcase himself and Hillary? Pinkerton says that major media didn't cover Blair's statement, so it seems to be a TCS exclusive - by default. But soon everyone will know it.

Marriage Helps Family Finances

According to a report by the Brookings Institution and Princeton University, stable marriage can increase the financial prosperity of couples and improves the lives of American children. The study finds that while the poor see lack of money as a barrier to marriage, a healthy marriage actually ensures them healthier finances in the long run. And this is true even when the couple had children out of wedlock. Brookings Institute is not conservative at all; Princeton University too. They highlight some signs of interest:

The Bush administration is proposing to spend $1.5 billion over the next five years to increase “healthy” marriages. Gays and lesbians are demanding the right to marry. A few states are reconsidering no-fault divorce laws and experimenting with new types of “covenant marriage.” And legislators are scrutinizing tax and transfer policies for “marriage penalties.”

The report consists of several articles including: Healty Marriage Programs: Learning What Works by M. Robin Dion (Mathematica Policy Research) on marriage education programs. Via World Magazine's blog. Reuters also carried a summary of the report.

Honor our US Constitution

Saturday is Constitution Day. Thomas Sowell asks at Townhall.com: "Why do we pay attention to the Constitution in the first place?"

But the moral and legal bases for the authority of the Constitution do not rest with those who wrote it. The moral and legal authority of the Constitution comes from those who ratified it -- "we the people" -- not those who wrote it.

That's you and me, not the 100 Senators who look so important on television. CFIF recommends that we celebrate this day by - surprise - reading it. Find it HERE.

Crisis at the United Nations

The United States has finally taken the logical action. Everyone knew the party couldn't last forever. But now it is over. The United States has been paying 23% of the budget of the UN, funds 48 per cent of the UN's World Food Program and 41 per cent of the UN High Commission for Refugees. And what have we gotten? Endless abuse. When Kofi has messed up his budget and needs cash, who comes through? The United States. Now the US is asking the UN to reform itself and Ambassador John Bolton is doing the asking! Some of our complaints as listed by the Telegraph newspaper of the UK:

• Only last week the UN was described as incompetent, corrupt and in urgent need of change by the Volcker commission, the organisation's own report into the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.
• Elsewhere in the organisation, Washington looks on enraged as countries such as China and Cuba are voted on to the UN's human rights commission.
• America is appalled too by the UN bureaucracy, where staff are appointed according to nationality and where pay aims to match that of the most generous member state.
• Yet few UN civil servants are ever held to account, as the oil-for-food report underlined. Even before it was published, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said: "I don't anticipate anyone resigning." No one did, despite blistering attacks on named staff including Mr Annan himself.

They won't even do anything when they got caught with the largest misuse of funds in history - the "Food for Oil" program. So Bolton stepped in:

Yesterday, with just 24 hours to go before world leaders convene for the UN's 60th birthday summit, Mr Bolton was still refusing to agree a shopping list of ambitious policies designed to change the world. Many are in stark opposition to the policies of President George W Bush's administration. Why, the Americans are asking, should we go along with this?

The "ambitious policies" are the same old stuff from the UN's bureaucrats. Empty words about reform. And solid proposals to get the US to pay more. In past years our diplomats went along with most of this nonsense. But now the party is over for the UN. What does the United States want the UN to do? To promote democracy. To stop glorifying dictators. The have the Human Rights Commission to be composed of countries that uphold human rights, not the abusers like Sudan and Libya. To get rid of corruption that has been allowed to entrench itself and grow. Hopefully change can begin now.

Cantwell Dunce of the Week

We are all bothered by the even higher price of gasoline this week. Can't someone do something about it? Two actions can improve it: 1- increase the supply of refined gasoline, or 2- decrease the demand for it. Enough of either will bring the price down. Can a US Senator increase the supply or decrease the demand? I haven't seen one do it. But Senator Maria Cantwell has another course of action: price controls. Both the theory and the experience of economics show what happens when the price is limited in the absence of actions 1 and 2 - you get a shortage. It has happened every time. Wikipedia In 1973 price controls resulted in rationing and line ups at every gas station and gimicks to reduce them, such as alternating days by even-odd license plates to match the numeric day of the month. Jeff Jacoby says it well:

There is only one rational and efficient way to allocate a scarce commodity: through price. That is because the more a person values something, the more he is generally willing to pay for it. By charging what the market will bear -- for gasoline or anything else -- vendors channel their product to the customers who value it the most. A mandatory cap on the price of gas may seem like kindness to the poor, but all it will do is raise demands that can't be met. The result will be "Sold Out" signs on Joe's pumps, or gasoline lines stretching around the block.

And

Painful as they are, price spikes are invaluable -- especially after a disaster, when critical goods and services are at a premium. At $3 or $4 a gallon, post-Katrina gasoline prices are transmitting two urgent messages. To consumers they say: "Conserve! Buy only as much as you really need, and look for ways to use even less." To the energy industry they say: "Produce! Get those refineries back online and supply more gasoline ASAP." Aren't those exactly the behaviors we want to encourage? But the power of market pricing to affect behavior is unwelcome to those who think useful things don't happen unless the government tells them to happen. In The New York Times last week, Senator Levin dismissed the idea that higher prices will induce consumers to use less gasoline. "By that logic," he snorted, "you could raise prices to $10 a gallon and you make sure that people walk." In the real world, though, consumers do make choices based on price, as the large photo accompanying the Times story illustrated nicely. It showed a woman turning away from gasoline pumps charging $5.88 a gallon. The caption read: "The price of gas at a station in Stockbridge, Ga., last week was too high for one customer, who returned to her car without buying."

Back to Cantwell. Rich Karlgaard of Forbes Magazine honored her as Dunce of the Week for this brave proposal. Actually she isn't the only one! Two more US senators and the governor of Hawaii share the "Dunce" award. See also No Price Gouging.

The Israelis may save the world - Hydrogen

Scientists in Israel have invented a process to produce hydrogen from the sun's energy. Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, everyone seems to agree. But the future has appeared to be far off because producing hydrogen has required burning fossil fuels - that's supposed to be the past. But now there has been a breakthrough, Israel 21C reports:

In a breakthrough that has dramatic implications for energy use worldwide, Israeli researchers have shown that hydrogen fuel can be produced with the help of sunlight - propelling the dream forward of using hydrogen as a 'green' fuel. The innovative solar technology developed at Weizmann Institute of Science that may offer an environmentally sound solution to the production of hydrogen fuel has been successfully tested on a large scale, and also promises to facilitate the storage and transportation of hydrogen. The chemical process behind the technology was originally developed at Weizmann on a scale of several kilowatts. It was then scaled up to 300 kilowatts in collaboration with scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology... The new solar technology developed by the Israelis and their European colleagues creates an easily storable intermediate energy source form from metal ore, such as zinc oxide

And the storage problem is handled by this method, as well:

The process generates no pollution, and the resultant zinc can be easily stored and transported, and converted to hydrogen on demand. In addition, the zinc can be used directly, for example, in zinc-air batteries, which serve as efficient converters of chemical to electrical energy. Thus, the method offers a way of storing solar energy in chemical form and releasing it as needed.

And there have been enthusiastic reactions, such as:

"The Israelis may save the world if this technique for producing hydrogen pans out and proves practical," wrote Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan on his influential blog Informed Comment.

I continue to be optimistic about our energy future because the Earth is bombarded with huge amounts of energy from the sun every day. We just have to find ways to capture, store, transport and use the solor energy. Hat tip to The American Thinker. They say that Juan Cole has nothing good to say about Israel, so his endorsement is a strong indication.

Remember 9/11

Don't forget. We didn't realize we were at war through attacks in New York in 1993, against US barracks in Saugi Arabia, two US emabassies in East Africa simulataneously, and the USS Cole. It took simultaneous attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, before we realized. Don't forget.

No Price Gouging

We see it again. When an event causes a shortage that everyone knows about, prices start going up - as you would expect. Then some US Senator says "Price Gouging." Then every talking head starts parading their ignorance. "This was done intentionally by BIG OIL." ... etc. Prices change according to the Law of Supply and Demand. If the supply is cut, but no one wants the commodity, then the price goes down slightly. If the supply is cut, but there is constant or increasing demand, then the price goes up. And those who value the commodity the most get it, because they are willing to pay more. Anyone who tries to do away with the Law of Supply and Demand makes things worse - they cause shortages. Iain Murray at TechCentralStation covers the basics.

For various reasons, I took a lot of trips to the local hardware store on Sunday. On my route there were two gas stations gazing at each other across the thoroughfare. On the first trip, I noticed that one was charging $3.41 a gallon for regular, while the other was charging $3.29. And there, in a nutshell, was proof that gas price "gouging" does not exist. This was actually an excellent case study for the basic economic lesson on supply and demand in situations of scarcity. Price is not an arbitrary figure. It contains a vast amount of information from the viewpoints of both the supplier and the customer. In normal circumstances it represents a balance between the effort and risk undertaken by the supplier to provide the product and the preferences and needs of the potential consumer taken in aggregate. Each individual consumer will have different preferences and needs, so that one may balk at a price another finds perfectly reasonable and another considers a bargain, but as a whole the price represents a signal about the balance of considerations among consumers in the market for the product. When the product becomes scarce, however, additional information is added in the form of increased price that represents notice from the producer to the consumer that he may not be able to supply every customer with the full amount of the product desired. The customer is then more able to balance his wants with his needs and, again taken in aggregate, the market will respond to the scarcity by reducing its demand to meet the expected supply. ... Gouging in the gas market makes no sense. The owner of the station that was charging $3.41 as I drove by was presumably reacting to his own supply constraints. Yet because the other station took a lot of his business, those constraints eased. By the third time I drove past the station, he had reduced his price to $3.29 also.

And...

So, economics tells us that "gouging" simply doesn't exist in a rational market. Responsible higher prices actually ensure that as much of the good or service as possible is available for use. In an emergency, that is an important consideration.

Disaster 101 by Bob Williams

Bob Williams was the state representative for the district that contained Mt. St. Helens when it blew in 1980 killing around 70 people; it knocked out bridges, flooded homes with mud or destroyed them, destroyed good-size businesses and just blew away a lot. He is now the president of Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a Washington-oriented think tank in Olympia. They do first-class work. Williams covers the basics of who is responsible for what in a disaster. Samples:

The plain fact is, lives were needlessly lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, and the city's mayor, Ray Nagin. The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency operations center. The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city.

And:

Mayor Nagin was responsible for giving the order for mandatory evacuation and supervising the actual evacuation: His Office of Emergency Preparedness (not the federal government) must coordinate with the state on elements of evacuation and assist in directing the transportation of evacuees to staging areas. Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.

Congratulations, Bob, for getting in the WSJ, my main source of economic and national news.

Timothy Goddard plugged on national radio

Blogger friend Timothy Goddard got in a plug for his blog on Hugh Hewitt's national talk radio program. The Flag of the World He has an item "1951 vs. 2005" on disaster preparedness.

The Real Plan in New Orleans

Someone discovered the real plan by the city of New Orleans in case of a disastrous hurricane. Not the show piece Mayor Bragin put on their web site. No, the one they used. The New Orleans Times-Picayne on July 24, 2005 had the story:

City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own.

That is the plan: You are on your own.

In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation. In the video, made by the anti-poverty agency Total Community Action, they urge those people to make arrangements now by finding their own ways to leave the city in the event of an evacuation. "You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," Wilkins said in an interview. "If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. "But we don't have the transportation." Officials are recording the evacuation message even as recent research by the University of New Orleans indicated that as many as 60 percent of the residents of most southeast Louisiana parishes would remain in their homes in the event of a Category 3 hurricane. Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city. The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all audiences, but the it is especially targeted to scores of churches and other groups heavily concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community Action.

Do these poor people all have DVD players? But it's moot because the DVDs have not yet been distributed! Blogger Brad Delong quotes the entire article. I don't know of a link to the original. Plan II Mayor Nagin himself is quoted with a modified version:

Plenty of missteps at the local level contributed to last week's disaster too, from a failure to take basic steps to protect the telecom infrastructure to inadequate food and water at the Superdome. New Orleans may be able to stage events such as Mardi Gras and Jazzfest and provide parking, crowd control and adequate toilets for millions of visitors, but its hurricane plan was more rudimentary. "Get people to higher ground and have the feds and the state airlift supplies to them -- that was the plan, man," Mayor Ray Nagin said in an interview yesterday.

Timeline Rich Moran has constructed a timeline of the events with links. Using it will aid our discussions.

Blame the 3d String for the Starters' Failure

The federal government doesn't have the first responsibility in disaster response. The local government and the state are the "first string." The federal government is supposed to come in later. The feds role is to provide backup resources - backup. The locals and state are supposed to provide the initial resources, then the feds come later. No, this does not fit the "blame Bush for everything" meme. The City of New Orleans had a great plan for a major hurricane. This is the Google cache of it. But they didn't follow it. For example, the plan says to stock the Superdome with food and water for something link 10,000 people for 3 days. But they didn't stock anything at all. Do you blame Bush for that? News Snipet Blog covers the plan. Police Our Constitution prevents the federal government from policing our civilian population. This is because of fear of misuse of the power by the president resulting in a police state. So, of course, it is the local government that provides the police - during normal times and during disasters. The locals know their area and are known by the population, so they are the best source of police. During a disaster the governor of the state has control of the national guard and can use them for policing. Only as a desperate last resort are federal troops used. Hugh Hewitt is a law professor and he covers the legal basics. Skip past his coverage of the ridiculous claim that Condoleeza Rice is to blame.

For starters, the police power resides in the states. There is no general federal police power. It is the power to take care of a citizenry's health, safety and morals. It was described by Chief Justice Taney in the Licensee Cases this way: But what are the police powers of a State? They are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty to the extent of its dominion. And whether a state passes a quarantine law, as a law to punish offenses, as to establish courts of justice, or requiring certain instruments to be recorded, as to regulate commerce within its own limits, in every case it exercises the same power; that is to say, the power of sovereignty, the power to govern men and things within the limits of its dominion. "To the extent of its dominion," is the key phrase. For the federal government to act in the face of a natural disaster, it's help must be requested and its guidance accepted by the state and local officials.

Locals Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco made major errors. The federal FEMA made some and they should be held accountable. Director Brown did poorly and should be replaced. Levees - Does reduced funding for the Army Corps of Engineers explain the failures of the two levees? No. First, the levess that failed had been rebuilt and were in good shape, says the Army Corps of Engineers. Second, A New Orleans levee board was being investigated for corruption before Katrina:

Rampant public corruption was doing big business in New Orleans long before Hurricane Katrina ever hit. What then Congressman, now Senator David Vitter calls "corrupt, good old boy" practices were apparent in the New Orleans Levee Board just one year before the collapse of regional levees, emergency communications and government services brought the Big Easy to the brink of anarchy. In fact, Senator David Vitter requested a federal investigation into improper practices of a number of public utilities, including the New Orleans Levee Board, and anew Task Force was to have been initiated in the Baton Rouge office, beginning in July 2004.

Buses - There has been a lot of coverage and an aerial photo of the 255 school buses that are still sitting in flood water; they were not used to evacuate people. If they were crammed with 55 people in each, then 14,025 could have been evacuated. Photo - You can't blame Bush for the mayor not using them. Resource - Rich Moran has built a timeline of the events in the Katrina response.

New Orleans Air Traffic Controllers

Air traffic controllers in the New Orleans area had a triple challenge when the rescue/relief efforts scaled up last week. They were short of staff due to people caring for their own flooded homes. Most of thier phones lines and some radios were out. And they had to handle up to 100 helicopter operations per hours, which they hadn't done before. Kudos to the FAA's air traffic controllers and their union, National Air Traffic Controllers Union. Story in USA Today - 9/6/05

Katrina Responses

I am overwhelmed by the natural disaster of Katrina, the human tragedy of its victims and the combination of heroism and folly, extraordinary effort and apparent laziness in the responses of both victims and responders. My friend Jim Miller expresses frusteration equivalent to mine. The mayor, governor and president ordered evacuation and attempted to get people to carry it out. Many people chose to stay when they were capable of leaving. Some could not. Now there was provision to shelter a few thousand who were hard to relocate. But the facilites were overwhelmed by numbers increased by those who could have left. And furthermore, the Superdome was chosen as a shelter for its strength against the hurricane. NOT for the flooding and the extended stay it required. Low lights Jesse Jackson, who claims to be a reverend, looks only at race. Race baiting made him rich. But I don't care what JJ declares since he got caught spending donations to his nonprofit to pay for his mistress's house.

And he also criticized the role given to former presidents George Bush senior and Bill Clinton as coordinators for a fund raising effort following the Katrina tragedy, similar to their role as tsunami fund raisers. "Why are there no African Americans in that circle?" Jackson asked. "How can blacks be left out of the leadership and trapped into the suffering

Mike Fancher, the reader's representative at the Seattle Times thinks that it is incredibly brave to carry a notebook and ask questions. The herioc reporter is a first responder taking notes while others are saving lives. Oh. Mixed Errol Lewis of the New York Daily News considers the people to still under slavery!!

That hard, unsympathetic view is the traditional American response to the poverty, ignorance and rage that afflict many of us whose great-great-grandparents once made up the captive African slave labor pool.

Then he points out the ugly facts on the corruption that the people of New Orleans and Louisiana have allowed.

These government failures are not merely a matter of incompetence. Louisiana and New Orleans have a long, well-known reputation for corruption: as former congressman Billy Tauzin once put it, "half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment." That's putting it mildly. Adjusted for population size, the state ranks third in the number of elected officials convicted of crimes (Mississippi is No. 1). Recent scandals include the conviction of 14 state judges and an FBI raid on the business and personal files of a Louisiana congressman.... The rot included the New Orleans Police Department, which in the 1990s had the dubious distinction of being the nation's most corrupt police force and the least effective: the city had the highest murder rate in America. More than 50 officers were eventually convicted of crimes including murder, rape and robbery; two are currently on Death Row.

Can they expect a full-faith effort from the politicians, bureaucrats and police who have gotten away with allowing such a mess? Of course not. I am praying for the people displaced, injured, sick, victims of looting. And for the responders sent in to help.

Fewer, not more, Hurricanes

James Glassman is hopping mad about people who claim that you and I are at fault for global warming and global warming has resulted in more hurricanes. Therefore Katrina is your fault. His article at TechCentralStation

A profound tragedy is unfolding in New Orleans... That is why the response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now. Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces. Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.

The table he cites that counts hurricanes by intensity by decade that hit the US mainland is at NOAA's National Hurricane Center And the revered New York Times also has the science that does not connect global warming and hurricanes.

Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

Let's stick to the science. Hurricanes have decreased, not increased. And their cycle is over long-term ocean temperature cycles.

Let's help the victims of Katrina

Let's do what we can to help the Americans who were victims of hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and Florida, I guess. There are many charities that are working in the area. I have personal knowledge of current and past leaders of

Mercy Corps.

They are fine people and their organization has a track record of getting 92% of every dollar to recipients. I am joining a coordinated effort of bloggers to direct readers to charities helping Katrina victims on September 1. See Truth Laid Bear for the complete list. Last I checked it had 534 blogs participating. And I am supposed to include Technorati tags: Flood Aid and Hurricane Katrina And Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit's Blog burst page.

US continuing to grow and lead

What will the world’s economy look like in 2020? What will the power relationships be amongst the United States, the European countries, China and India? Where will the largest areas of growth be? Jacques-Henri David President of the Deutsche Bank Group in France writes in Le Figaro

In 2020, the United States will remain the world superpower, with a total GNP of approximately $17 trillion to $18 trillion. Thanks to its dynamic demographics (1% annual population growth), a productivity and a competitiveness amongst the best in the world (currently second in the world and far out in front of Germany (13th) or France (26th) according to statistics from the World Economic Forum), and thanks also to its constant drive to create and innovate, and with flexibility due to the mobility of its labor force, the United States will maintain a clear advantage over China and India and will widen the gap with Europe. With average per capita salaries of approximately $55,000, the income of the average American in 2020 will be 1.5 to 2 times greater than that of a European; five times higher than that of a Chinese and nine times more than that of an Indian (approximately $6,000 per capita). China will indisputably be the world’s second greatest economic power, with a GNP of some $14 trillion, or three times higher than today.... Paradoxically, one of its handicaps will be an aging population, due to the delayed impact of its "one child policy." By 2020, the median age in China will be approximately 40 years, which will be higher than in the United States. The world’s third greatest economic power will be India, but far behind the first two, with a GNP of about $7 trillion.... In Europe, Germany, France, along with Italy and the United Kingdom, should lose ground in the world competition with a GNP per country of about $2 to 2.5 trillion. While European countries will remain rich in terms of per capita income (about $32,500), their relative weight will decline with their demographics and weaker growth (on average, almost half as much as the United States). Countries like Spain or Ireland will experience a higher level of development than the European average, thanks to a wider opening of their economies to the outside, the dynamism of their investments, good population growth forecasts and effective immigration policies.

Some of the French and Germans know that growth comes by opening their economies, dynamic investments and population growth. But this banker expects that they will watch other countries grow while they stagnate.

Milken Institute - good organization

Beach blogging. No sailing since my wife is suffering major back problems. Mostly sunny and 15 mph plus winds. The Milken Institute is a think tank set up by Michael Milken. Milken enabled major new technology developments in the 1980s by inventing new financing tools - junk bonds enabled leveraged buyouts, most cell phone development. Read George Gilder's positive analysis of Milken. Yes, Milken was convicted of securities fraud and spent time in prison. Milken had cancer and fought it off. Now he is putting his talent and energy into the Milken Institute. Milken hosts an annual conference that attracts the brightest and best in economic development, new technology, financing, etc. The past two years he has hosted a panel in which the 3 other members are Nobel winning economists. I am impressed. Milken has a quarterly journal that is excellent. Accessing the articles requires registration, but you get a downloaded PDF file. The current issue highlights China. The World Bank's representative in China David Dollar writes that China's sprint to prosperity has left the country more vulnerable to stumbles that we would like to think. Worse, and more importantly, the global economy's success is now hostage to China's. If China fails to manage its financial system, to adjust to natural resource scarcity or to cope with its enormous air and water pollution problems will be felt by its neighbors, trading partners, that's us, and it geopolitical rivals - us again. I can't link to individual articles; here is the table of contents. Nuclear power is becoming the "energy source du jour." Rising costs for oil, gas and coal combined with fear of global warming lead to increased interest in nuclear. Nuclear produces no CO2 emissions at all. So it should be - should be - the environmentalists energy source of choice. The recent energy bill passed by Congress contained several incentives for nuclear power. I thought I blogged on it... But more is needed. The gigantic, decades-long effort to build a long-term storage for nuclear waste in the US has been way laid by a federal judge who insists on eternal perfection. Congress will have to overrule the judge and set a reasonable standard. Again, table of contents. Unfriendly to business - states Milken Institute analyzed how friendly state are to business. If they want jobs they need businesses to locate there and stay! But some states place huge roadblocks before businesses.

• The worst by far - Hawaii
• New York
• Massachusetts
• California

See the whole story and list

Making good news look bad = Seattle Times

The Base Closure and Realignment Commission while looking at closing military bases has good news for the state of Washington.

"At NAS Whidbey the future is so bright you got to wear shades," Larsen said in a statement. "The BRAC Commission's decision will have no impact on the NAS Whidbey's future." [Rep. Rick Larsen, D, WA] Whidbey Island is the home of the EA-6B Prowler and the new home of the next generation of electronic attack planes, the EA-18G, Larsen said. And the Oak Harbor community will soon welcome an aircraft squadron from Spain that will add about 500 new jobs, he said.

And the larger bases are essential: Fort Lewis, McChord AFB, Naval Station Everett, Naval Station/Shipyard Bremerton. So the Times paints these facts as bas news. What bad news? Bremerton was hoping to add more jobs from shipyard closings in Connecticut and Maine. But those will stay open, so Bremerton won't get more jobs.

Vote on Maine base may keep hoped-for jobs from Bremerton

was the large headline on the front page. The people of Bremerton are disappointed they didn't get more jobs. Headline news.