Just Saying
Maybe they talk differently in Chicago. Pack more meaning than most between the lines. “Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale gave new meaning to constituent advocacy yesterday when he told Metra’s executive director ‘people are going to get hurt’ in the dispute over how many minorities they decide to hire for a railroad bridge project, the ‘Englewood Flyer.’”
The Sun-Times also states Beale is not the only elected official weighing in on the project. Earlier this year, Congressman and former Black Panther Bobby Rush also threatened Metra over African Americans not getting their fair share of the first $86 million being spent on the project.
So the question is: who doublecrossed whom? Why think so low? After all, the ground that was broken in October, 2011, for this $133 million rail project was funded by the President’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. By the messiah himself. It was slated to employ 1,500 workers. “Governor Quinn says the majority of those 1500 jobs … will be filled locally, as in by South Side Chicagoans.” What could go wrong?
As it turned out, everything could go wrong, when things work out as they should. The labor contracts, Beale averred, were fixed.
“When you look at the make-up of the community — when you look at the unemployment rate … in that particular community, it’s probably 35, almost 40 percent. … To have a contract come like this in the African-American community with less than one percent minority participation is an insult.” …
“I’m trying to help you help yourself. When I say that, problems could arise. When you look at a community like Englewood [that] is challenged and you have over $1 billion of work coming through and there’s no people of color working on that project, I’m afraid people are going to get hurt,” Beale told Clifford during Thursday’s committee hearing.
You don’t say? You can see why Beale might be suspicious of Chicago’s Metra Board. After all this august body actually takes out corruption insurance on its own leadership. “How far does corruption go in Illinois? So far that Chicago’s commuter rail agency actually took out insurance against it.”
When Metra chief Phil Pagano stepped in front of a speeding commuter train last May, he took a number of secrets with him.
Perhaps the largest was what he did with the nearly half-million dollars he was accused of misappropriating from the agency. Specifically, Pagano was accused of taking some $475,000 in improper advances on vacation time, even forging the signature of Metra chairman Carole Dorris on the paperwork. …
But after his suicide, few held out hope that the public would see any of the money returned.
Some of it came back last week in the form of a check, from an insurance company. Since 2001, Metra has required its executive director, chairman, and board members to carry corruption insurance.
Just in case. Just in case people walk in front trains, steal money or renege on promises. Maybe the contracts that really matter aren’t the ones written on paper. Recently President Obama’s ex-best buddy Tony Rezko described the life and times of former Governor Rod Blagojevitch, now doing time in prison. He expressed surprise not at the corruption of the governor, but at his habit of calling people from anything other than a pay phone.
Rezko was behind bars when Blagojevich was arrested on charges that he tried to sell Obama’s old Senate seat. But there was something else that surprised Rezko.
“I thought he knew better, I should say. I was surprised. I was surprised that he had said the things he said with regard to the Senate seat on the phone,” Rezko said. “I wasn’t surprised that these conversations take place, I was surprised that these conversations take place on the phone.”
There are certain circles where no one is surprised at venality. They are only shocked by the lack of it. In rough towns honesty looks as out of place as duck on a bicycle. When you fit in nobody notices. For example, on a day when job numbers were reported to by abysmally low, the Daily Caller reported that the President was “raising $5 million at fundraisers in Chicago this Friday – including one co-hosted by Marilyn Katz.”
So who is Marilyn Katz? According to the New York Times, she’s the person who gave Obama “entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s. As a leader of Students for a Democratic Society then, Ms. Katz organized Vietnam War protests, throwing nails in the street to thwart the police.”
The Chicago Tribute also noted that Katz, “once advocated throwing studded nails in front of police cars, back in the SDS days when the group was alleged to have thrown cellophane bags full of human excrement at cops and cans of urine and golf balls impaled with nails.”
What could be more natural than pals talking old times? But Katz’s strictly legit now, as far as it goes. Perhaps the accusations suggesting that the President is foreign born are entirely unjust and defamatory. He may in the end be as American as deep dish pizza pie, Chicago style.
Belmont Commenters
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No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
Well, this is off topic, but I am a little surprised that the NY Times continues to engage in treasonous leaking of national security information even with Obama in office:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?_r=1
Surely this sort of thing ought to be kept quiet?
“Surely this sort of thing ought to be kept quiet?”
In a perfect world. Unfortunately, we live in this world, which falls waaaay short of perfect.
As a practical matter, the USA leads the Earth in cyber warfare. Our lead isn’t as great as in other types of warfare but it’s still a lead. America has been mostly playing defence, which makes sense when you consider most computers are in America.
Now that the rest of the world is starting to automate and network, the USA can start thinking about offensive operations.
Things like Flame and deadfoo7.
Politicians love anything that allows them to look tough without actually being tough. So we will see more. Remember, if it’s hidden it doesn’t do the politician any good.
Someone had to get cut out of the Stimulus slush funds, and I guess the disadvantaged minorities on the South side can’t afford to donate enough, to have the president notice their plight. I believe that Obama has SIX fundraisers today, 3 in Minnesota, and 3 more in Chicago. I’m sure Ms Katz, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn can act as campaign fund “bundlers,” since Rezko’s still in prison. With friends like this, I guess Obama can’t lose, can he? His Chicago handler’s and comrades will ensure that, one way or another…
Michelle Malkin was right, the entire Chicago political machine fosters nothing but a “Culture of Corruption”
Remember, if it’s hidden it doesn’t do the politician any good.
Some things are only good if they stay hidden. Like what Blago said on the phone for instance. He has a lot of time to reflect on that. But what the NSA secretly does to potentially nuclear armed enemies, on the other hand, should be shouted from the housetops.
There is nothing good and bad of itself whose value is not determined by the answer to the question: who sent you?
The NYTimes views betraying national intelligence secrets as an important part of its mission. They will stop when the top executives are indicted, convicted an jailed. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
THAT TODDLIN’ TOWN
Chicago’s toddlers know the score
Before they reach age five
And by the time they’re twenty-four
Why some are still alive
And into politics they go
The people they will serve
And stand on tracks to watch a slow
Train come around the curve
But not before the money tree
Was shaken and the plums
Fell into pockets ‘cause they’re free
And underlings the crumbs
Oh yes it is a toddlin’ town
A place where dreams are made
A place Obama’s shaking down
A place of masquerade
Where City Hall holds crooks and thieves
In offices for life
And everyone in town believes
The game is to the knife
From Kenya unto Harvard Law
Young Barack made his way
And then Chicago town he saw
And he was there to stay
Attending church with reverend Wright
And listening to his screed
And dreaming Marxist dreams at night
Of making white men bleed
And now he toddles ‘round the globe
Bowing low to kings
And kissing every bloody robe
And kissing tyrants rings
But come November of this year
It all comes tumbling down
And Barack’s thrown out on his ear
Back to that toddlin’ town
Wikipedia – “In 2008 Beale spent more of his aldermanic expense account than any other alderman on public relations, with more than $16,000 paid to The Publicity Works, a company owned by longtime Democratic political consultant Delmarie Cobb. …Beale on August 24, 2009 became the second alderman to concede his daughter was admitted (in 2004) to an elite free public college prep high school, Whitney Young High School, after he called principal Joyce Kenner.”
Beale is young, but already following in Uhbama’s footsteps, spending Other People’s Money and wallowing in the perks and power; a true Dem hypocrite.
I assume that Beale and Rush are getting some back chat from from the “Community”. Their role is to pretend that they represent the “Community”, and to do their Mau Mau Kabuki to distract the “Community” when they are not being awarded a share of the spoils. The “Community” is foot soldiers for the Party, but they can’t contribute anything to the warchest so they will never be given any of the spoils. If the “Community” learned this truth, they would stop cooperating with the party. They would prevent the Party from setting up polling places in the “Community” and the party would lose control of the State.
The “Community” has been great for the Party because they are willfully ignorant, and they want to stay that way. They refuse to go to school and learn things because that would be acting white. Their officials and leaders are corrupt and cynical, and can usually be bought for chump change, which gives the Party more room to take care of the inner circle. Merely being able to set up polling places in neighborhoods has been a bonanza for the Party. It can manufacture votes from cooked registration rolls of living people who have never voted and have no interest in doing so. Show a couple of real voters from a ward office to the television cameras, and they are golden.
In the ordinary course, this arrangement will continue for generations. One potential problem is the party’s desire to cultivate a second “Community” among the Mexicans. The Party wants to do that because they have so thoroughly alienated white working class people, they would never be able to win an honest election. But a clash between the “Community” and La Comunidad is inevitable, and there will not be enough juice left in the system to resolve it.
Some musical accompaniments to this discussion:
Tony Carey – A Fine, Fine Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9jb8xWhbxU
Glenn Frey – Smuggler’s Blues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhk5770-TZo
Geez, don’t tell me in Chicago they trust the insurance companies. How naive they is. They are naives from the naive navy, giving up gravy. In the gravy boat. The Knaves.
Obviously African Americans should continue to vote for Democrats. It gives them so much to feel bad about. Bad as in good. Or is it good as in bad?
I understand that Stimulus projects have to pay the Davis-Bacon “prevailing wage”, which is code for predominantly white union labor. The Davis-Bacon Act was racist in its inception. Thus, to satisfy one constituency, the unions, another constituency, the African American community, gets the short end of the deal. But it’s Chicago, and that’s the law, so what are you gonna do?
I’ve been trying to find the video or script of the Marx Brothers movie, I think it is from “Room Service”, where the assorted managers grifters and hotel clerk all argue over getting 10% of each others 10%.
Blago’s problem always seemed to be that he wasn’t evil enough. There was something simple about him. Even if all of his ideas were wrong, the same Democratic party claptrap as everyone else, he actually intended to do something. He wasn’t focused on the mechanics of the graft. To “professionals” like a Rezko or a Chicago Alderman or an Illinois State Legislature he came across as an amateur.
What would an old fashioned machine politician who intended to get something delivered, even if inefficiently, like the late Al Smith of New York or Mayor Daley of Chicago make of these feckless extortionists? Part of the problem is that 75-100 years ago a government construction project meant thousands of jobs for unskilled manual labor. Now that is less true. The Alderman’s constituents are largely unemployable. The legal and administrative apparatus that liberals have constructed to protect the workers has so eliminated the possibility of disciplining and training them that even the government can’t use them.
Let me clarify for anyone who is not from Chicago: Beale doesn’t care how many black workers are employed in this endeavor; he wants a larger cut of the pie to go to black businessmen, who in turn will funnel money back to him.
11 Blast: Exactly right. Blago was an amateur at corruption. He was personally broke, and looking for little one-offs here and there to pay his bills. He was way out of place in a world of hired-truck scandals and kickback schemes that operate 24/7 and generate regular streams of income. Daley showed how to pull a one-off. Sell the city parking meter rights for 75 years for a billion dollars, and make the money vanish, then retire. Blago was way out of his league.
But Blago has done one thing right. He’s stayed bought. He kept his mouth tightly zipped, took the sentence and is serving it out quietly. He will be OK when he gets out. I predict a presidential pardon from Obama before Obama leaves office, and Blago will find a steady stream of nicely paying consultant jobs for the rest of his life. Watch and see.
I wonder, were there any actual workers from the South Side looking for these jobs? I mean the South Side isn’t known for it’s work ethic.
Just an off-topic note:
W – I like the idea to post source links to articles that inform your thoughts. I wouldn’t mind being able to at least comment on some, or perhaps in the future post as well … though that might be difficult to manage.
I can’t say I’m surprised that the White House is taking credit for Stuxnet, though it seems some of its precursors (data-mining virii) started before he took office. As stoicheion said, politicians love looking tough without having to deal with the messy business of actually being tough.
This fits right in with recent revelations about Obama personally ordering kill strikes with drones. Who does it help for the world to know the CinC is (micro)managing this affair so thoroughly? Obama, in that he’s perceived as being tough. I suppose it also helps give a little insulation to the drone-operators from future charges by a future administration of war crimes (as the concern is now regarding waterboarding).
When I hear that Anthony Beale warned “people are going to get hurt,” all I could think is that wasn’t a warning — it was a direct order to his troops on the ground to start operations. No, not a warning … a confident report of future “news” to come.
dla @ 14
Work ethic, shmethic. What’s to say those looking for jobs would be qualified, either? Depends on the job, of course, but civil engineering projects come with certain necessities in terms of labor.
Doesn’t matter, to the race agitator. To him, it’s just like a union situation … they better be employed and paid nicely, and if that means even more employees are needed by the contractors to ensure the job is done right, well that’s for them to worry about.
Ernie G #10:
The Davis Bacon act requires that on Federally funded projects you have to pay the wages for the nearest location that has a union, even if that is 500 miles or more away. It does not mean you have to hire union workers, but of course it means you can’t hire anyone cheaper, either.
Blast #11 and Dla #14: That came to mind to me as well. Note that they did not say “We have 5000 unemployed construction workers in this district and it’s a crime that none of them were hired.” They just want their cut of the Obama money. Performing actual useful work is a bug, not a feature of the program.
After the blacks in LA burned down their own neighborhoods in the Rodney King riots they were heard to say they better see some of the money to rebuild coming their way or else they would burn down someone else’s neighborhood next time. But of course they had already tried that, and in the Korean neighborhood were met with barracades made of bags of rice and manned by armed men.
8. Walter Sobchak
A fine, fine day was new to me. I liked it. I haven’t heard a new ballad in ages. Since Roger Miller, IIRC. Thanks.
this is just pathetic!
how has every president looked over all this corruption in our government?
are there no men or women with guts that can become president and kick butt?
are we so corrupt that we won’t be able to get uncorrupt?
horrible situation we are all in now with the chicago mob in the white house.
Well, there’s hidden and then there’s ‘hidden.’ The more corrupt the politician, the more important it is the message get out to the right small group, but stay hidden from the bigger one. Beale here needs the folks spreading the stash around to get the message (make sure my folks get theirs), and he needs his folks to get the message (I’m lookin’ out for you). But he’d just as soon nobody else hear about it. Blago of course needed the folks willing to pay for a Senate seat to get the message (bidding opens at $1 mil), but unfortunately for him he couldn’t keep the wrong folks, the RICO folks, from hearing it too.
That’s a driving force in how our politics have degenerated. Pols trying to keep two channels going, the public one and the private one, with different messages on each carrier wave. It’s breaking down and the private channel keeps going public, largely for two reasons. One is the Internet, which routes around the “information damage” of the MSM, which is no longer able to cover up.
But it’s also because of a lack of trust. Obama has to make the drone ops and the British mole and the cyber attacks public because nobody trusts him on the national security front. So he’s got to make his credentials known. Likewise, Beale, in an earlier more prosperous time could probably have just told his folks to trust him, he had everything taken care of. When the jobs came through, they’d know who got the credit. But now? The jobs ain’t coming through, so he’s got to make the hidden channel public so they know he’s on the case, even – especially – if he can’t produce any results.
JMH #20:
“That’s a driving force in how our politics have degenerated. Pols trying to keep two channels going, the public one and the private one, with different messages on each carrier wave.”
That’s the deal with the WOT as well. They have to tell one group they are thrashing the terrible terrorists and another group they are trying to negotiate with the poor deprived unfortunates and try to better udnerstand why they hate us. And while Obama found it useful to deplore Bush going around and “just air raiding villages” during the campaign he now braggs about he has done more far Predator hits than Bush.
The ability of the left to function despite overwhelming cognitive dissonance about their leadership continues to astound everyone – except our enemies.
If you have a government,you have a flow of money and power, and hence given human nature, you will have corruption. You can’t eliminate the lust for power and/or money, all you can do is try to reduce it or channel it. The whole checks and balances thing spoken of in the Federalists Papers is about setting “interests” against each other so they can’t steal too much. The “interests” can collude with each other but seldom in a permanent arrangement. The Gutenberg Press has free editions of the Papers in downloadable book forms.
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1404
It would be better if everyone simply assumed that we did it, rather than having us trumpet it, for one reason I can think of. Deploying stuxnet was an act of war. Now, Iran has been committing acts of war against the U.S. and other states since 1979, so in some sense we have been in a state of war with them for decades.
But publicly taking responsibility for it does give them a real casus belli. In this age of lawfare, that may matter. At least we can think of scenarios in which it would better for them not to have that. Who knows, maybe some clever lawyer will bring a class action civil suit against Obama on behalf of the targets of drone strikes.
It may not matter at all, but this does seem needlessly to give away points, entirely separate from its national security implications.
“The NYTimes views betraying national intelligence secrets as an important part of its mission.”
They certainly want people to think that, don’t they? But remember, these are ‘open secrets’ – a topic Mr. F touched on in 2008. While some people are hamstrung by security clearances and journalistic integrity (heh), there is apparently no active conspiracy to silence anyone. And no need.
I once believed I was exposing all sorts of fraud on my blog. Little did I know that I was more like the jerk at a Christmas party who goes around telling people “There’s no Santa Clause!” Apart from making kids cry, the only response I got was “We know. What’s your problem?”
Well, not everyone does know. Real or not, however, we all pay Santa’s salary. While only fools think that he flew his own sled into the Pentagon, one can’t help but wonder what is actually happening in the world when all news is fake. The few explanations I’ve gathered sound incomplete and silly to me. Perhaps because there really is no explanation – just an amalgam of interests and competing views that aren’t even worth worrying about.
There may be something more going on in Chicago. Remember, this is Buraq’s home turf. If anyone among the urban poor thought, and many did, that the god like Lightworker was going to make a miraculous difference in their lives, it should have been the urban poor of Chicago’s South Side. He going to pay their mortgage, their car payment, their tab at the gas pump, raise the seas, yada ,yada, yada.
But except for the criminal banking element, the unions, particularly the public sector unions, his big donors, a few of the enviro- nazis and some of our enemies overseas like Putin and the Jihadis, Buraq just hasn’t delivered the goods for his constituencies, much less for the rest of us. And the disappointment couldn’t or shouldn’t be greater than among the black urban poor.
Buraq has delivered no big jobs programs for the urban poor. No extra bennies, really. Just a debilitating depression with far, far fewer jobs, and much higher expenses, particularly at the gas pump. Got to be a huge let down, if not in some eyes a betrayal. There is kind of an old adage that goes something like most of us really feel an economic downturn, but the poor, without some kind of special help, just get shellacked.
“But publicly taking responsibility for it does give them a real casus belli. ”
Doesn’t matter. The last nation to declare war on America was Nazi Germany. The one before that was Japan. how did that work out for them? Declaring war on America is even more stoooopid then tugging on batman’s cape or pulling the mask off the Lone Ranger.
As far as casus belli goes, nothing is worse then capturing the US Embassey and holding diplomats hostage for 444 days.
There are those of us that understand Iran and the USA have been at war since November 04, 1979. ‘Peanut’ Carter just didn’t have the guts to ask Congress to declare war. The Mullahs were to smart to declare war. They were on the Nazi’s side and remember what happened.
There are Americans that claim War only happens when Congress says it does. Since those same Americans are the only hope America’s enemies have for victory, those enemies will try to not discourage them.
Thugs threaten, its what thugs do. I think some gent called it “thug thizzle” during the 08 voting, as in ” I want to see Obama get his thug thizzle on”. Well now we have the thugs threatening the thugs….
Thug Thizzle fizzle fo shizzle!:
GREEN SCAM: 80% of Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Donors – 19 Companies Went Bust (Video)
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/06/green-scam-80-of-green-energy-loans-went-to-obama-donors-19-companies-went-bust-video/
Wretchard, Clean up is needed on isles 25 and 26. And it looks like some IPs are gonna need the ban hammer.
The amazing part about corruption is how easy it is to get people to believe that they will benefit if they just help you get yours. Same reason the Nigerian prince scam works so well. People are by nature gullible if they have no frame of reference. Religion provides the needed frame of reference but itself is flawed and thus allows the ability of evil to propagate through out mankind. Perfection is not the goal outside of one’s own soul, but you can’t tell a progressive that.
It is my understanding that the fava bean futures crashed after the Hannibal Lecter movie.
jfs @ 30: The amazing part about corruption is how easy it is to get people to believe that they will benefit if they just help you get yours.
Going through a couple of estate sales this weekend, my own family’s and another, and meditating on the elements of corruption in it all, on items from a dollar to a thousand.
If corruption helps the world go around and recycles things back to nature, is it all bad, or just unavoidable.
Josh @ 29: “If corruption helps the world go around and recycles things back to nature, is it all bad, or just unavoidable.
Most certainly unavoidable due to the nature of man. Corruption in the general sense is just that, the recycling of things back to nature. But to me corruption of the soul is the most damaging and has the most deleterious effects upon mankind. So not all corruption is bad. But the kinds that are bad are really bad.
OT,
There may be a thread worthy topic on the nature of Spam. Why do people/firms do it? Either it works, indicating that human nature is so fallen that even the obviously false message is still received and induces action, or it repels, meaning the only reason to spam would be under false colors to defame a rival. If the second case were true though then everyone would know it and no one would spam, lest it create sympathy for said rival. The insanely illiterate and obviously fraudulent internet advertisement does work. It generates revenue.
Some people work like slaves and never make a decent living. Others just open a window and put up a sign saying “Send your money here. Something may happen.” Given that it works how can the Capitalist model function at all?
IMHAO, the acquisition of wealth is a function of mind set not skill, intelligence, or diligence. People who acquire wealth tend to think about money and how to get it more often and more strongly than others is my uniformed belief. I took an a series of aptitude tests and one of the things they tested for was how fast you could think, how many ways you could assemble a wooden puzzle in a given amount of time. It seems that people who are slow thinkers have a tendency not to stick to long term goals and are better at jobs and tasks that can be done over short periods of time. Back in the day I had to do the prioritized list of things to do thing. Before I went to sleep I’d get out my list add or remove goals and check off goals met. In the morning I’d get out the list and start to work it. Unfortunately keeping a list like that is a long term thing and I stopped doing it back in 2000.
“Wretchard, Clean up is needed on isles 25 and 26. And it looks like some IPs are gonna need the ban hammer.”
Isle 26 would be me, although I see no spill there. You cannot ‘ban’ somebody from the Internet. ICANN has the ability to remove an IP, but EVERY node on the web can release and re-establish an internet number. W knows that even if you don’t and he also knows that if he gets tired of my chatter he can send me an E-mail and I’ll fold my tent and ride off into the night. A matter of honor and manners.
I have not violated the terms for posting. You obviously don’t like me, my post or both. That does not give you censorship rights.
The only thing wrong on Isle 26 is misuse of ‘to’. It should be ‘too’. I missed that and it’s the sort of typo that the auto-editor won’t catch.
s @ 33: Isle 26 would be me
After cleanup your number moved up into that slot.
–
Amazing show today on ABC This Week. Paul Krugman one moment telling a HUGE lie, and the next moment MAKING SENSE! The Obambus campaign rep (Stephanie Cutter) telling a huge whopper, my meme of the week, that the Obambus Regime has a $100b portfolio in green energy WHICH IS MOSTLY SUCCEEDING! Krugman showed a chart of per-capita government spending falling, which is ABSURDLY WRONG, an absolute lie, and it will be days or weeks before he is called on it, I have no idea what he actually put into it, it is that bad, but I’m sure the real sins are sins of omission. OTOH the Romney rep (Eric Fehrnstrom) is both telling coherent, logical stories (most of which I believe are even true), and he is telling them well, in an even and serious voice, while the Obambus rep has the smug, condescending tone one associates with communist agitators, mostly of the twenty-something, scruffy-bearded coffee-house revolutionary variety (tho this is a woman with no beard).
… and back to it in realtime.
Buraq has delivered no big jobs programs for the urban poor. No extra bennies, really. Just a debilitating depression with far, far fewer jobs, and much higher expenses, particularly at the gas pump. Got to be a huge let down, if not in some eyes a betrayal.
I’m torn between sympathy and contempt. Why contempt? Even the poorest person is allowed to vote. It is the most powerful means they have of changing their government. The urban poor live day to day with crime, failing schools, no jobs, little opportunity, crushed by regulations, locked into welfare dependency, led around by their noses by race-baiting politicians who lie through their teeth about hope time after time …
One would think that a people with such a profoundly dysfunctional government would take every opportunity to vote to change it.
Yet they vote 90-95% Democratic every single time.
So what message are they sending to their politicians? The message they are sending is, Everything is perfect. Don’t change a thing. And their politicians listen. Why should their politicians be so foolish as to change anything when they have 90-95% of the vote locked up? Why shouldn’t they reach the logical conclusion that the reason they have 90-95% of the vote is because of how they treat their constituents?
33. stoicheion, et al—
I’ll see your ”isle” and raise you two ”aisles”.
Excessive regulation increases corruption. When it becomes impossible to weave through the maze of conflicting regulations to do things legally, either nothing will be done or shortcuts will be found.
When building things is outlawed, only outlaws will build things. c.f. Tombstone, AZ on the previous thread.
We are not there yet in most jurisdictions, but this is the trend. And it favors the people who can cut through their artificially created barriers.
For the children.
@ Brandon (15) who said: “When I hear that Anthony Beale warned “people are going to get hurt,” all I could think is that wasn’t a warning — it was a direct order to his troops on the ground to start operations. No, not a warning … a confident report of future “news” to come.”
yes, very likely so. Also, I’d wager that Beale will “get hurt” if he can’t deliver. Maybe not physically hurt, but surely politically–if he can’t bring home the goodies, his constituents will throw him out of someone who can–and maybe financially, particularly if he spent political or financial capital in advance on the anticipation that the goodies would come. Heaven help him if others spent such capital in advance and expect him to cover their impending losses.
On the one hand the U.S., Australian and Canadian governments all publish “The Little Black Book of Scams” to help consumers avoid being scammed.
On the other hand government can itself take the lead role in scamming the electorate.
I guess scams are bad unless the government does it.
Exsqueeze me, but I’ve just surfed on over to the federal reserve page Paul Krugman used for his stupid charts, and I believe Krugman is an idiot, and simply does not know how to do math.
Here are his charts:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/1937-2/
Here is the site he used to draw them and the base series:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=GEXPND
You have to look at Krugman’s second chart, and fiddle with the site, to add two more series to the GEXPND, display them all as “percent change from a year ago”, and then define the custom transformation a-b-c, that is GEXPND-GDPDEF-CNP16OV. THAT IS NOT VALID! The proper relationship is something like (100*a)/(b*c). Use the “normalize to 100″ feature. I’m emailing Krugman. Of course the chart is totally different and shows an increase over the last ten years, with a modest dip in the last two.
Krugman needs to hire a smart freshman intern to do his math.
Harsh Words to Follow:
http://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2012/06/mad-madder-and-madderer-europeans-and.html
“The Euro-fanatics, in a bid to save their sacred coin, are going to provoke a global economic catastrophe. I have written before several times about the fallacious thinking behind the EU and the Euro, and its dire consequences for Europe and the world. To sum up, this EU/Euro project was motivated by envy of and animus for the United States. The EU is formed largely by a bunch of bureaucrats from nations that are has-beens, never-weres, and never-will-bes. The EU reps I have encountered in my career were the most insufferable and boorish dolts imaginable–but very well paid. They could barely contain their hatred for the United States, and liked to brag endlessly about how “Europe” was going to be the next super-power. They attributed all sorts of magical properties and events to “Europe,” e.g., winning the Cold War, keeping the peace, designing an economic system that was the envy of the world, etc. The Euro currency would be the crowning achievement: a mighty amulet that would ward off the evil Americans and their almost as evil and deluded stooges, the British (Note: EU bureaucrats, as a rule, do not like the British, consider them only partially European, resent their rejection of the Euro, and, above all, detest the special military and intelligence relationship between the UK and the US.)”
Here is the corrected, saved graph.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=7GV
Nobel prize my ass.
ps – I have to say, the Fred site is the best designed and programmed web site I’ve used in years!!!
pps – do NOT use the percent change, the corrected graph uses the normalize to 100 instead.
Jms, I hope you did not interpret my comments as to being sympathetic to the plight of black poor. Innocent individuals yes, the group/class, no. You are most correct; they have made their bed and now are forced to sleep in it.
erc rodson: “Excessive regulation increases corruption.” Actually in the ” pay to play” con practiced in Chicago and other major blue cities, excessive regulation is used as an incentive by corrupt politicians to reap more payoffs. The worse the regulation, the greater the need to payoff your local pol.
14. dla
I wonder, were there any actual workers from the South Side looking for these jobs? I mean the South Side isn’t known for it’s work ethic.
Beale is not looking for the jobs per se, he just wants to be the one who controls the distribution so he can skim a little cream off the top. He can import the actual workers.
Here’s the problem: Anthony Beale is using a dangerous and thuggish tactic of “Sewing the Seeds of Violence” through his loud suggestion from his bully pulpit. He knows very well that his very utterance of ‘people are going to get hurt’ is inflammatory.
He is using his public voice to set up a self-fulfilling prophecy type threat. It is disgusting and should be condemned.
Josh @ 40: “I believe Krugman is an idiot, and simply does not know how to do math.”
It is more likely that Krugman does know how to do math — but he thinks that we are all idiots and will swallow his dodgy arithmetic without review.
Krugman is probably correct in thinking that the media types and government bureaucrats with whom he hangs out cannot tell a positive number from a negative one, and would fail any math test beyond a 4th Grade level.
Fortunately, you are here to advise the rest of us on Kruggie’s dodgy math. Unfortunately, you are not on the Sunday shows to offer him a remedial course in arithmetic.
Krugman does similar things all the time, but this time he shows his work, and it is wrong – undergrad student would likely flunk out with those skills.
Let’s see if he takes down his second chart, or both.
Nope, not yet. But he has added a new one already, that *is* about the right shape (I’m probably too lazy to unpack it).
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/the-level-of-government-spending/
Just a note that his first attempt was an attempt to show slope rather than scale, which is itself often misleading, and anyway his math is still wrong.
On top of that, is there some *point* to even talking about government expenditures per person???? Do we want that to be going up, I mean really?
Because I doubt even the correctly computed charts from the Fed, I have to assume that real government expenditures per person have SOARED since 2008. But any remaining bogosity in this is going to be hidden in the Fed’s numbers, so unless I trip across something equally official and more clearly stated, we have to leave that part as it is.
Excuse the excess posts on this topic.
One more – at least one comment at the NYTimes site also notes the blatant arithmetic error:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/1937-2/?comments#permid=52
… but just the one that I see, and it doesn’t doubt the results based on the error, which it should.