Good to know

CNN Headline: "Charles Manson spends most of his time alone."

What a funny coincidence. So do all his victims. Sadly, they didn't have a choice in the matter.

DC Hypocrisy

The AIG bonus mess exposes the serious lack of oversight and responsibility that went into creating the bailouts and the stimulus package. Chris Dodd (D-CT) now says the amendment he sponsored to the stimulus package that protects bonuses at companies receiving bailouts was forced on him by the Treasury department.

Dodd...said it was because administration officials were afraid the government would face numerous lawsuits without the new language.

Now tell me, why would a Congress and administration willing to create an ex post facto tax on contracted bonuses that they failed to discover when taking over the company be afraid of lawsuits when they already are showing a willingness to change the law to suit their desires?

All this as Obama confesses that "the buck stops" with him, but also admitted that, "nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG."

You know what, Mr. President - you own AIG now. We own AIG now. Put someone in charge of it. Otherwise don't be upset when things you don't like show up.

Gratuitous and unnecessary sentences

From an article about George Bush respectfully choosing not to say anything critical about Obama. It is a non-story fluff article. But then there's this paragraph:

Bush said he wants Obama to succeed and said it's important that he has that support. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has said he hoped Obama would fail.

Rush is not mentioned anywhere else in the article. Except here. You know, just in case you forgot that he...what, MSNBC, hates America? Hates Obama?

Useless.

Overcoming barriers

During tax season, I start thinking more and more about finances. While our finances are currently in pretty good shape, I keep looking for new ideas on how to make sure it stays that way. One of my new favorite blogs in this vein is Get Rich Slowly. Lots of good ideas in here (and I think my wife is tired of hearing me toss them around).

Today, a guest post from the author of the upcoming I Will Teach You To Be Rich discusses how to overcome the barriers that stop us from doing the things we know we should do, like working out more or spending less. It's not enough to cognatively know we should do these things. We have to clear away the barriers standing in the way of those goals, whether they be physical, mental, or other.

Go read it and then break down a barrier today! I'm going to buy stock. I've had a barrier against buying stock not because of the economy or because I didn't know what to invest in. My barrier was figuring out the right mechanism to purchase my investment. I'm going to get around that today! Wish me luck...

Innovation

Google, that bastion of continuous improvement, suddenly, quietly, has added lots of surface streets to its traffic feature on its Maps. The Google Map I have on my iGoogle page shows Washington DC and it's set to show me the traffic (nevermind that I don't drive into work - it's still interesting and often makes me happy that I'm not driving). Now it shows traffic on 14th St and Connecticutt and Constitution and Independence - even some of the farther out arteries like 7 and route 50.

Very cool.

Managing frustration through science

Today's Dilbert cartoon makes me want to invest in the drug companies.

What's in it?

Curious what's in the stimulus bill that will be so stimulating? The Wall Street Journal now has a whole long list of every line item. Some things that seem odd to me:

- $400 million for space shuttle construction - aren't we phasing out the shuttle?

- Under the "Justice" catagory, only one line item explicitly discusses something that creates jobs.

- Homeland Security got $1 billion for "Explosive detection systems for airports." How is that stimulus and not just a straight homeland security appropriations item?

- $2 billion in "funds for communities to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed and vacant properties." I'm just amused they put this in since they can just claim eminent domain for free!

There's a lot there and it's interesting to read through. I can definitely see things that would have fit nicely into a stimulus package. I see a lot of other things that would have been better applied in a relevant regular appropriations bill. I won't hold my breath in hope that the approps bills debated later this year won't double-dip on a lot of projects.

Something scary for Friday the 13th

I've read a lot of horrible things the past few days that left me mouth agape - mostly about the "stimulus" madness - but nothing has floored me so much as this report of goings-on in San Francisco.

And these are the people we themselves progressive! If I ever try to go to San Fran, remind me of this post.

Today's quote

Best thing I've read today:

I liked the food a lot. Of course, my gf got sick afterwards. Prices are pretty good, the decor looks like it was decorated by a 10 year-old girl, but in a charming not repulsive way.

That's from a review of Jandara, a Thai restaurant in Woodley Park. This review could nto be more accurate, even the sick girlfriend park, as I think back to my second date with my now-wife.

Principles

President Obama says [Commerce Secretary nominee Judd] Gregg withdrawal was "somewhat of a surprise."

I'm sure it was. Gregg stood down because of principle. Obama thus far had only lost his nominees - Tom Daschele, Bill Richardson, and Nancy Killefer - because of a lack of principled behavior. I understand that can be confusing.

Obama took blame for the Daschele thing, saying he "screwed up." I thought he was too hard on himself over that. Daschele screwed up. Obama just had the unfortunate situation of living with the consequences.

But with the Gregg thing, Obama really did screw up. He pulls out a Republican Senator in a Dem-led state but fails to get a Democrat put up as a replacement. He picks a guy who looks like a hypocrite because he once tried to shut down the Commerce department and now was tapped to lead it - even, reportedly, campaigned for the role. And in the boldest political power play, he plucks the Census out from under the Commerce Secretary's purview, taking away what would have been arguably be the most important role of the new Commerce head.

If Obama and his team want to admit to screwing something up, it should be the process they have gone through during the Gregg nomination. Kudos to Judd Gregg, though, for standing on principle.

The wonders of cognitive dissonance

Read an article in the Economist today about a little bookstore in China. The bookstore has established a significant following for its excellent collection of communist literature. The store's built a popular website, and even has a well-attended speaker series.

And it's private. And profitable. And quite good at marketing. So while they rail against the evils of capitalism and free markets, it is China's market liberalization that has allowed the store to even exist. The article mentioned that they've even had an impact on how public officials refer to things because of the store's growing influence.

If the ideas they promote were full put back into practice in China, it'd be the state telling the store what to do, what to sell, where to be located. There'd likely be no speaker series and surely no website.

It's stories like this that remind me of the power of the market. The invisible hand always moves, even for those who try to bite it.

And it won't even work!

My opposition to the so-called stimulus package stems largely from a philosophical bend away from massive government intrusion in the economy. In a crisis, there is certainly a role for government - I'm not so libertarian as to deny that. But to throw ridiculous amounts of taxpayer dollars at a problem, funding a little of everything in the hopes that something works, is beyond reasonable to me. We've tried this kind of government intrusion before and it didn't work: contrary to the President's scathing words last night, it was government meddling - not the lack of it - that extended both the Great Depression and Japan's "lost decade".

But let's setting aside principles for a moment, let's say I was all for throwing lots of money at the problem to fix it, with the one caveat that I would like the money to be spent effectively. A post on Econbrowser suggests the new "compromise" package from the Senate doesn't even meet that test. In comparing the House and Senate versions, it notes that the Senate managed to pluck out all the provisions that may have led to some actual, immediate stimulus.

Indeed, in so many of the cuts to the original Senate bill, the wrong things were cut. And the wrong things were expanded, including most importantly tax provisions. The tragedy is that so many of these tax provisions are clearly going to have little "stimulus" effect.

All the more reason to vote this thing down and start over.

Why should you bother?

FreedomWorks has a great Top Ten list of reasons to oppose the stimulus. I learned another one at breakfast this morning: the bill contains various and sundry provisions that get us significantly closer to state-run health care. It does such things as provide the funding for the oversight board that Tom Daschele recommends in his health care manifesto.

Look, let's get something clear. It isn't that I and thousands of other conservatives are oppose a stimulus package of some kind. But I, along with thousands of others, am oppose to this so-called stimulus bill because it won't achieve real stimulus.

You want to stimulate the economy with targetted jobs programs, targetted handouts, and targetted tax cuts, fine. Let's have a debate about a bill focused on that. Let's set up benchmarks and let's set up a process and let's get it done.

But if you want to pass an overhaul to our health care system, make that a separate bill and let's have a debate on it. You want to give handouts to "green" energy sources and pick the winners and losers in the energy world, that's your perogative, but let's have a debate about. You want to give away money to Hollywood, pay to build (and furnish) a permanent home for Homeland Security, pay to renovate the Commerce building, or give lots of money to universities and other public institutions so long as they agree not to allow religiously affiliated groups to use their buildings, um, ok, but let's debate those things on their own merits in their own time. Let's not lump them all into an unrelated bill.

Passing this bloated bill is not the kind of change we were promised. This is taking all the bad things Democrats got mad at the Republicans for doing for years and multiplying it times ten. And this certainly is not stimulus. It's handouts to favored interests at the great expense of Real People.

Kill this bill. Start over. Do it right or don't do it.

Make the stimulus equitable

Give it all to bloggers. Brilliant thinking.

Double trouble

Building on the last post - the GOP has another idea to meddle in the housing market, this time with the interest rates. The idea is to artificially suppress interest rates down to 4% to raise home prices.

The math doesn't work out, though, as this Wall Street Journal article points out. With a likely wave of refinancing to come from such a bill, taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $100 billion. I have a very smart friend who's already considering this option.

Ug. McConnell, quit diddling with the bill and just lead your caucus to vote no already.

Stimulus from all sides

It's easy to point the finger at Democrats for the ginormous stimulus package currently being debated in the Senate. They are the ones, after all, in leadership and who have set the rules up - particularly in the House - to limit or avoid altogether GOP amendments.

But Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points out that Republicans get their share of blame too. The GOP added a $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers into SB 1. Tyler points out that this is unlikely to have a positive impact, and more likely will continue us down the road that helped get us into this current mess.

If GOP leaders want to help stimulate the economy, they need to vote against this bill and start over, either with new ideas or with the (small) pieces of the current bill that actually stimulate economic activity.

If you want to help, sign the petition at NoStimulus.com and give your Senators a call while you're at it.

Reduced friction

Seth Godin often talks about mechanisms that reduce friction in marketing. Often he sights reduced friction as a negative, saying that just because it makes life easier doesn't mean it makes for better marketing.

On the flip side, if you're marketing something to me that reduces friction in my life, that probably is a great thing. Google's iGoogle page, which I first resisted, continues to provide for me everything I need. In a glance, I get blog headlines in the little Reader window, the top headlines on CNN.com (trite and fluffy though they seem to be lately), a map showing DC traffic, Google's horribly inaccurate weather, the most current cat on I Can Has Cheezburger, and today's Dilbert cartoon.

And now - a little screen where I can update my blog. Scrolling through my Reader window, I pondered why I didn't blog more. Oh, right.

Friction.

I had to open a new tab, half the time I had to log in even though I would have supposed I was logged in because of my iGoogle page, then make a few more clicks, then type, then spell check, then post. Occasionally I'd need to reformat some things.

But I like to post. I wish it was easier. Then, I thought, to steal from the iPhone commercials, "I'll bet there's an app for that."

There is. It's a little window that appears on my iGoogle page and lets me type a whole entry in. What I lose in functionality (no ability to do block quotes, no spell check, and my labels don't show up automatically) I gain in access. Now, if I have a thoughts that's more than 140 characters, I can post it here.

Without the friction.

Thank you for 2008, and some hope for 2009

For many people, 2008 ended with no more sentiment than "good riddance."  For me, it was bittersweet.  The now-finished year treated me well - my first full year of marriage to my wonderful wife; a (largely free) trip to Colorado, where I learned to ski and didn't die trying; hiking around in the Swiss Alps and even popping into France for breakfast; buying a house in a wonderful neighborhood where we actually know (and like!) the neighbors; continuing to grow and learn professionally with great colleagues; and so much more that to mention it would risk driving you away from these posts forever.

It wasn't all perfect.  The Braves disappointed us all (again).  Small-government conservatism was thrown under a TARP by the Bush administration and a new administration will likely not help bring it back, which leaves it to those of us who still espouse true conservative principles to continue to claw our way back.

For 2009, I continue to be optimistic that the Obama administration won't be a complete disaster, though I'm less enthused for what could come out of Congress.  I'm also optimistic about the economy - but only if government can stop meddling long enough to allow Real People to make some decisions for themselves.

As is the tradition for anyone with a modest case of punditry, I'll venture a few predictions for where we'll be on Jan 1, 2010:

• Obama will have 65%+ approval ratings, bolstered by nearly 50% approval among Republicans but hurt by the disappointment of the fringe Left
  
• The Big Three automakers will be the Big Two
  
• The Dow will be back to 10,000 but not to 11,000 yet.
  
• The Yankees (ug) will win the World Series; the Braves will pull in a modest yet still disappointing 3rd place in the NL East
  

That's all I got.

To everyone who made 2008 great, thank you.  I look forward to live, work, and play with you in 2009.

Our weird world and the weird people in it

It pains me to live in a world where something like this gets people's attention but a quality show like Arrested Development can't.

Of course, 35% of eligible Americans couldn't be bothered to vote in the most widely-publicized and talked about Presidental election ever, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

Modest proposal for the auto companies

Ok, you can have your bail-out (though not for the extra $9 billion you suddenly find yourself looking for). BUT - you give $10,000 to every high school graduate to buy a GM/Ford/Chrysler car - or the cash equivelant if they prefer (because maybe, like today, they will still want a Toyota instead). You do that for my kids, their kids, and their kids to make up for how your inability to adjust your business model has mortgaged their future.

You bankrupt us, we bankrupt you. It'll be fun!