Blagojevich and the Emerald Licence
ArchPundit
Up at the Political State Report
2003
Let American Die
Conventional wisdom in St. Louis is that American Airlines must be saved to save the hub status in St. Louis. Regular readers know that I think this is incredibly stupid and anti-consumer, but more importantly, efforts to keep inefficient airlines alive hurt consumers by keeping inefficent business models alive. Fortunately, Daniel Gross at Slate agrees.
But maybe they shouldn’t. What if we’re in the midst of a several-years-long era of lower demand, transparent pricing, and rising competition from upstarts free of expensive contracts and airplane leases? These airlines might emerge from bankruptcy with lower debt loads and better union contracts and find they still can’t compete. They might be setting the stage for a round-trip journey to Chapter 11?call it Chapter 22. Perhaps instead of trying to save all our airlines we should let some of them die off.
Amen.
Mubarak’s Hypocrisy
Via CenterPoint:
Mubarak claims the Iraqi war would produce 100 Bin Ladens
Sure and Mubarak’s government’s continuing repression will lead to 100 Ayman al-Zawahiris.
Bush League Move By Blago
While I think some of the whining about a New York aide is a bit silly, Rich Miller rightly takes Blagojevich to task for the faux pas of going to a legislative district in a negative mode when there is no campaign.
Rutherford was not amused. "To physically appear in my hometown, a half a block from my legislative office, on a day that I physically cannot be present to talk about something legislatively maybe isn’t the best way to encourage something to be accomplished," Rutherford told the Bloomington Pantagraph. "The way to work with Dan Rutherford is to pick up the phone and call."
Rutherford is a straight shooter and this sort of tactic is a good way to piss him off. To make matters worse, Blagojevich isn’t going to get far in Pontiac without some nod from one of the state Republican Represenatives or Senators. Pontiac is rock solid Republican town that a Democratic Governor needs to work with not against for support.
Hello Gary!
Gary Hart has added ArchPundit to his blogroll.
Why thanks! and I’ll be returning the favor!
I’ll be adding Dean’s as well, and well one can hope that I’ll be able to add a blog by Alan Keyes for the humor value.
Up DATE: It might be helpful to point out that despite writing a book with William Lind, Hart thinks he is a fruitcake.
Good News over at Cooped Up
Well to me at least…
Neal Bites for the Guv
The Sun-Times came out in support of Blagojevich’s plan to restructure Illinois’ pension debt. Now, Steve Neal has jumped in trying to sell it as an obvious choice.
The problem is that it isn’t clear that the deal is that great and the profits are taken up front. The revenue crunch isn’t likely to be one year, though this will be the worst. If a 10 profit is booked upfront, why is that a good thing? It continues the states’ tendencies to take one-shot deals to cover continuing expenses.
Not to be overlooked, it assumes that the return will be 6%. While that might be likely, the State of Illinois needs to fully examine the effects if that assumption fails and what it will do to Illinois bond ratings.
Finally, the fact that business supports the idea shouldn’t be surprising given Illinois state businesses will benefit from the sale and transactions.
Neal overlooks all of these issues which a responsible legislature should.
Watching MSNBC
Why does anyone care what Michael Savage thinks about embedding reporters? Admittedly, I’m happy to criticize the military on some things, but I think the generals are capable of making the correct operational security issues.
On the Arnett issue, yeah, Arnett said some pretty stupid things. I think the biggest issue from National Geographic is probably that he didn’t clear it and for MSNBC, well, he should have known to parse his comments better. There is a serious question of journalist ethics at issue, but let’s be real, the problem was his specific comment.
I’m not even that particularly comfortable with as strong of a conclusion as he made being said over Iraqi television. If he had qualified that a particular tactic hadn’t worked, that would be different.
From the journalistic ethics point of view, he became more of a story than a reporter and that is never good.
Finally, the good news, Nathan Bierma confirmed to me that Keith Olbermann is back on MSNBC. That almost makes up for hiring Savage.
On a note about Nathan, I’ve long been confused as to why the Redeye in Chicago is so concentrated on the deadtree version. I think that might be a part of increasing young readership, but a key component of building young readers is interactivity. A blog, like Nathan’s, would be an excellent tool to build the brand. Apparently, the Trib Company doesn’t get that. Too bad.
Red Team Blues
Fred Kaplan reminds us of General Van Riper’s ability to "be a real pain in the ass", by actually fighting instead of laying down during exercises.
I think it is clear the best case hasn’t played out. That doesn’t mean we are doomed or that this is a disaster. The US will win, and hopefully, our losses won’t be too severe. There are some nightmare scenarios that could evolve with Syria or Iraq, but those aren’t likely to be immediate concerns. Short term, we’ll win, and long term we need to find a way to manage a very difficult country.
The Armed Forces response to Van Riper is familiar to those who follow any bureaucratic agency, but in particular the armed forces. Richard Marcinko used to get the brass pulling out their hair when he ran a Red Cell team that checked base security. Marcinko is a bit self-serving, but the basic point remains that bad news is often buried or prevented from occurring. Marcinko was repeatedly overruled and hated for exposing the weaknesses in bases’ defenses at one point flying a Soviet Flag and saluting it as he went past a sub base taking pictures–and no one noticed. The Armed Forces don’t like bad news, but the hard truth is that bad news tells you when you need to innovate.
It is clear that some of our troops were surprised by fake surrenders and other such tactics. Why not? Probably not enough bad news was believed.
Energy: The Adults Are Back In Charge
In the rush to blame everything that was wrong in California on the most obnoxious Democratic politician in America, a little problem crept up. Gray Davis didn’t design the regulatory framework for deregulation of power in California, Pete Wilson did. It is clear now that the power suppliers gamed the system and screwed the good people of California. Of course, this doesn’t account for how Dick Cheney could be so clueless. Willfully clueless.
California botched dereg under Wilson when his appointees handed the rule making process over to energy companies. Gray Davis deserves most of the scorn he gets, but in this case, the administration looked the othwer whay while millions of people were bilked by crony capitalism at its worst.