August, 2011 archive
Death and Texas 2
I wish I could say that this is hard to believe: trying to play three-card monte with teachers’ lives.
But it isn’t. And it’s been lying low for eight years.
Perry’s budget director, Mike Morrissey, laid out a pitch that was both ambitious and risky, according to notes summarizing the meeting provided to The Huffington Post.
According to the notes, which were authenticated by a meeting participant, the Perry administration wanted to help Wall Street investors gamble on how long retired Texas teachers would live. Perry was promising the state big money in exchange for helping Swiss banking giant UBS set up a business of teacher death speculation.
All they had to do was convince retirees to let UBS buy life insurance policies on them. When the retirees died, those policies would pay out benefits to Wall Street speculators, and the state, supposedly, would get paid for arranging the bets. The families of the deceased former teachers would get nothing.
The Republican Party has sold its soul for a mess of pottage.
Read the whole thing or listen to EYKW, where I learned of it.
Twits on Twitter 0
It says something about flack’s conduct when a professor of flackery calls him out.
Natural vs. Unnatural Disasters 0
Priyamvada Gopal argues for a sense of perspective at the Guardian. A nugget:
Put simply, millions more homes will have been lost to bank repossessions than have been damaged by Irene. The storm caused some flooding, but much greater degradation has been inflicted on the US coastline by last year’s BP oil spill. A few days without electricity is challenging, but the blow to clean energy prospects posed by the State Department’s recent approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to Texas coast is more worrying.
Dis Coarse Discourse 1
Mike Malloy tees off on the lies. It’s a bit extreme, but only a bit:
Facebook Frolics, Sense Off Dept. 0
Duh.
Facebook said in a statement Friday it decided to end Deals after four months of testing. The service will wind down in coming weeks. It was available only in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco.
Frankly, I doubt that Groupon itself has any staying power. When using coupons hits reality show status, the end cannot be far behind.
Think Flip This House and real estate.
QOTD 0
Henry David Thoreau, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
The Return of Prison Labor 0
Facing South details that system’s shameful history and recent resurrection.
Truly venal and shameful.
The Republican War on Science 0
Ed Quillen of the Denver Post sends a dispatch from the front:
He notes that there can be justification for skepticism, listing “Social Darwinism,” eugenics, and several other areas where scientists went wrong.
I would note that the persons who promoted those movements were not physical scientists (such as chemists, physicists, biologists, and climatologists); they fancied themselves “social scientists,” but were actually activists with axes to grind.
In the case of Social Darwinism, the ax was justifying the wealth of the robber barons and the poverty of the working class; for eugenics, it was rationalizing racism.
Click to read the whole thing. Mr. Quillen’s concluding paragraph is a gem.
It’s Not Real Unless New York Is Somehow Involved 0
The curmudgeon columnist in our local rag gets one right:
First he went to Rhode Island. Later, he inched closer to the action in Battery Park.
(snip)
Yep, the biggest storm in years was aiming right at us and we were nothing but a postscript.
Until I read her column, I’d never heard of Jim Cantore. I find the Weather Channel even more boring that Lifetime.
It’s like the old weather broadcasts from the early days of cable, in which a camera kept panning automatically from a thermometer to a barometer to a anemometer, only with more talk noise and less information.
Afterthought:
My brother recommends Stormpulse if you want to track tropical storms with minimal hype and maximal data.
Words Fail Me, Stupidly Vindictive Dept. 0
You really must read the whole thing to contemplate the depths of inanity it portrays:
The alleged offenses include failing to take her daughter to a car show, telling her then- 7-year-old son to buckle his seat belt or she would contact police, “haggling” over the amount to spend on party dresses and calling her daughter at midnight to ask that she return home from celebrating homecoming.
Irene Good Night 1
The storm seems to be over in these parts.
Minimal damage except for
- Two fatalities in my state (one poor guy had a heart attack while boarding up his house, and an 11-year old was crushed to death when a falling tree destroyed the family apartment), the
- Almost a half-million Virginians without power, who now have no choice but to talk with their spouses, significant others, and housemates, and the
- Flooding in the low-lying areas (exacerbated by the non-existent global warming because sea-levels are two feet higher than they were 80 years ago).
We were fortunate not to experience a power failure, so we got to watch the coverage on the telly vision (which did little to restore my faith in telly vision news*–there was lots of filling time with babble) and talk amongst ourselves, which we seem to be able to do.
It could have been a lot worse.
I’ve experienced real hurricanes. I know.
_______________________
*I will say that the telly vision news here is saner than the telly vision news in Philly, but that’s sort of like saying that eating grits and red-eye gravy is better than eating straw.
Lazy Hurricane Blogging 0
It’s been raining all day. The center of the storm is still about three hours south (about 50 miles) of here. It will arrive just in time for high tide, exacerbating the flooding in susceptible areas.
The rain has picked back up after a pause and the wind has increased significantly, but the storm is no longer maintaining hurricane force winds except perhaps at the side that is well out to sea.
Blind Justice 0
Steve Chapman discusses eyewitness identifications at the Chicago Tribune:
Alejandro Dominguez, age 16, had no tattoos or pierced ears, and he reportedly could speak only Spanish. The woman, however, said he was the attacker, and largely on the strength of her testimony, he was convicted. Not until 2002 did DNA analysis prove Dominguez was innocent.
It’s a dismally familiar tale: a victim making an eyewitness identification that later turns out to be horribly mistaken. This type of mistake is universally known as the most common cause of false convictions. Yet law enforcement authorities, courts and juries continue to treat it as pure gold.
He goes on to discuss recent appeals court cases that lean to more realism in considering eyewitness testimony, which, despite its cachet, is often the least reliable.
It’s not that persons can’t believe their eyes; they cannot remember them.
And police and prosecutors, even those of the best will, are rewarded for convictions, not for truth.
Freedom Fries 0
From the write-up:
America’s wealthiest could learn a thing or two from a nation across the pond. In my Daily Take – I’ll tell you why the wealthiest in France DIDN’T need a memo from Warren Buffett to do the right thing for their country!
