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Cap and Trade: The Kyoto Protocol, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions, Carbon Tax, Emission Allowances, Acid Rain SO2 Program, Ozone Transport Commission, NOX, Carbon Markets, and Climate Change

Cap and Trade

Cap and Trade
The Kyoto Protocol, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions, Carbon Tax, Emission Allowances, Acid Rain SO2 Program, Ozone Transport Commission, NOX, Carbon Markets, and Climate Change

Compiled by TheCapitol.Net
Authors: Jonathan L. Ramseur, Larry Parker, Peter Folger, Ross W. Gorte, Renee Johnson, Kelsi Bracmort, James E. McCarthy, Donald J. Marples, Sam Napolitano, David L. Sokol, Richard Newell, Robert Greenstein, Sonny Popowsky, Steven L. Kline, Michael Carey, A. Denny Ellerma, Gilbert E. Metcalf, Karen Palmer, Chad Stone, Ray Kopp, Ted Gayer, and Jonathan M. Banks

The Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012, established binding reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for thirty-six countries. The United States was not a party to the treaty. Reducing GHG emissions through cap-and-trade programs is generating widespread discussion, including consideration by the U.S. Congress. Debate is ongoing as to cap and trade’s effectiveness, costs, inequities, and questionable reductions in pollution, to name a few.

Cap and trade is a policy approach for controlling large amounts of emissions from a group of sources. The approach sets an overall cap, or maximum amount of emissions per compliance period, for all sources under the program. The cap is chosen in order to achieve a desired environmental effect.

2010, 566 pages
ISBN: 1587331845 ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-184-8
Softcover book: $27.95

For more information, see TCNCAT.com

February 28, 2010 05:47 PM   Link    Publications    Comments (0)

Capitol Hill Workshop, 3-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

Capitol Hill Workshop: Politics, Policy, and Process

Intensive 3-day congressional operations workshop

Congressional decision-making is driven by politics, policy and process. In this engaging workshop, Washington-based experts discuss these 3 P's and help you understand the complete policy-making process.

You’ll get a solid understanding of:

• Congressional operations and the legislative process
  
• How public and foreign policy become law
  
• Congressional politics and leadership
  
• Congressional budgeting today
  
• The role of OMB in the legislative process
  
• Effective communication with Congress
  
• How the media covers the Hill
  
• Current campaign and election trends
  
• How members of Congress advance their legislative, public policy and political agendas
  
• How personal and committee staff work
  
• How you can build win/win relationships with staffers

Attend a congressional hearing and see the process in action.

March 3-5, 2010, 8:30 am - 4 pm all three days.

Approved for 1.7 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: On Capitol Hill in Washington, DC

This is a required course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations and for the Certificate in Communication and Advocacy.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see CapitolHillWorkshop.com

February 28, 2010 10:07 AM   Link    Capitol Hill Workshop ~   Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/28/10

Treat Me Like a Dog!




Art Blakey's Wisdom

• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• Is Inflation Coming? - "Mr. Market doesnt seem to think so. The WSJ reports on the first auction of 30 year TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) in nearly 10 years. The Journal thinks the auction was weak; I read it as Mr. Market doesn't see much prospect for a period of the kind of inflation some are warning about.
  . . .
  So based on the 30 year conventional bond yield of 4.731% and the TIP yield of 2.229% one gets an inflation forecast by Treasury bond market participants of 2.44%. Interestingly, that is very close to the Fed's long term inflation target of 2.5%.
  
  I generally pay great respect to the message that Mr. Market is sending. Certainly a lot more than to those 'buy gold inflation is coming' ads on TV and radio."
• Small Planes and Lone Terrorist Nutcases - "On the face of it, Joseph Stack flying a private plane into the Austin, TX IRS office is no different than Nidal Hasan shooting up Ft. Hood: a lone extremist nutcase. If one is a terrorist and the other is a criminal, the difference is more political or religious than anything else.
  
  Personally, I wouldn't call either a terrorist. Nor would I call Amy Bishop, who opened fire on her department after she was denied tenure, a terrorist.
  
  I consider both Theodore Kaczynski (the Unibomber) and Bruce Ivans (the anthrax mailer) to be terrorists, but John Muhammad and Lee Malvo (the DC snipers) to be criminals. Clearly there is grey area.
  
  I note that the primary counterterrorist measures I advocate -- investigation and intelligence -- can't possibly make a difference against any of these people. Lone nuts are pretty much impossible to detect in advance, and thus pretty much impossible to defend against: a point Cato's Jim Harper made in a smart series of posts. And once they attack, conventional police work is how we capture those that simply don't care if they're caught or killed."
• Obama to deliver health care The Chicago Way - "President Barack Obama will star in his very own televised entertainment spectacular on Thursday -- let's call it Federal Health Care Kabuki Theater.
  
  The Republicans wanted to dance. Now they'll have to step lightly. They were foolish to get trapped in his so-called summit on national health care. Or did they actually think they could outperform the skinny fellow from Chicago?
  
  The president is taking this one last chance to push his health care agenda, which by his own estimate will cost about $1 trillion over 10 years. That's money America doesn't have, but he could probably just print some more.
  
  Obama will be in his element, talking and lecturing, the law professor framing the debate. He'll spend hours being seen as reasonable. The Republicans will balk and the president will shrug. He'll sigh and say he tried to reason with them but they refused.
  
  Then once the cameras are turned off, he'll take out the baseball bat and explain how things get done The Chicago Way.
  . . .
  Americans won't know exactly what's in that federal health care bill that will change our lives. We won't know how much it will cost us, or which insiders get rich, until after it's all done.
  
  Naturally, the insiders will know. And after it becomes law, they might let the rest of us in on it.
  
  That doesn't sound much like a man transcending the politics of the past, does it?
  
  It sounds as if The Washington Way is just like The Chicago Way."
• China Said to Purchase Remainder of IMF Gold Sale - "The bullion banks can use paper gold to manipulate pricing around key events like this week's options expiration in the short term. They are powerful, and have many friends, their demimonde, who will help them to spin the facts, place opinion pieces, and resurrect old studies, to convince a gullible public once again that their promises are good, that their paper riches are wealth. This is the essence of the shaping of public opinion, the hidden persuaders, the not always subtle propaganda campaigns that so often pass for news these days.
  
  But the international currency regime is changing, and the developing countries are choosing to protect their reserves in traditional ways. For the first time in over twenty years the central banks have become net buyers of gold.
  
  The wealthy are buying physical silver and gold in anticipation of a dislocation in the structure of the existing international currency regime, no matter what they might say publicly to reassure the markets. This we know. Whether this is the most prudent thing to have done only time will tell, since there are a range of possible outcomes, and probabilities. But change is in the wind; the time of reckoning approaches and the accounts will be tallied and settled."
• The Future of Money: It’s Flexible, Frictionless and (Almost) Free - "The banks and credit card companies have spent 50 years building a proprietary, locked-down system that handles roughly $2 trillion in credit card transactions and another $1.3 trillion in debit card transactions every year. Until recently, vendors had little choice but to participate in this system, even though -- like a medieval toll road -- it is long and bumpy and full of intermediaries eager to take their cut. Take the common swipe. When a retailer initiates a transaction, the store’s point-of-sale system provider -- the company that leases out the industrial-gray card reader to the merchant for a monthly fee -- registers the sale price and passes the information on to the store’s bank. The bank records its fee and passes on the purchase information to the credit card company. The credit card company then takes its share, authorizes all the previous fees, and sends the information to the buyer’s bank, which routes the remaining balance back to the store. All in all, it takes between 24 and 72 hours for the vendor to get any money, and along the way up to 3.5 percent of the sale has been siphoned away.
  
  In the earliest days of credit cards, those fees paid for an important service. Until the late 1950s, each card was usually tied to a single bank or merchant, limiting its usefulness and resulting in a walletload of unique cards. But when BankAmericard -- later renamed Visa -- offered to split its fees with other banks, those banks began to offer Visa cards to their customers, and merchants began accepting Visa as a way to drive sales. Meanwhile, Visa and rival MasterCard -- as well as distant competitors American Express and Discover -- used their share of the fees to build their own global technological infrastructures, pipes that connected all the various banks and businesses to ensure speedy data transmission. For its time, it was a technologically impressive system that, for a price, brought ease and convenience to millions of buyers and sellers.
  
  But today, vendors are seeing fewer benefits from paying those fees, even as credit card companies have jacked them up over the years."
• Goodwin Liu on the Second Amendment - "Boalt Hall Associate Dean Goodwin H. Liu has been nominated to serve on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Some readers and Senators may be interested in his viewpoint on Second Amendment and other constitutional issue related to firearms policy. So here’s an excerpt from his article Separation Anxiety: Congress, The Courts, And The Constitution, 91 Georgetown Law Journal 439 (Jan. 2003). Liu’s co-author on the article is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The article is based on a 2002 speech that Senator Clinton presented at Georgetown, sponsored by the American Constitution Society. Senator Clinton and Professor Liu criticize recent Supreme Court decisions declaring two federal gun control laws unconstitutional:"
• Pro-life leaders say Pelosi lied, again, on federal abortion funding - "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrapped up today's White House Health Care Summit with a characteristically confrontational lecture in which she rebuked House Minority Leader John Boehner for saying the Obamacare proposal approved by the Senate and as modified recently by the White House provides public funding for abortions.
  
  'I think it’s really important to note, though, and I want the record to show, because two statements were made here that were not factual in relationship to these bills,' Pelosi said. 'My colleague, Leader Boehner, the law of the land is there is no public funding of abortion and there is no public funding of abortion in these bills and I don't want our listeners or viewers to get the wrong impression from what you said.'
  
  Pelosi's assertion brought immediate responses from pro-life leaders who claim the Senate bill indirectly uses federal tax dollars to fund abortion services provided through new Community Health Centers established by the legislation.
  . . .
  Under the Senate health care bill that will be the main bill Obama and Democrats push through Congress, there is no ban on abortion funding. While some states can opt out of funding abortions under the plan, taxpayers in other states will be forced to pay for them, Johnson said."
• The case against college - "College degrees are overrated, writes Ramesh Ponnuru in Time. While college graduates earn more, that’s partly because those who complete a degree are smarter, on average, than those who don’t. Sending not-so-smart people to college simply boosts the dropout rate.
  . . .
  College-prep programs may be too hard for vocationally oriented students. In some cases, what passes for college prep is too easy. 'College- and career-ready' is the new mantra. We need to define 'career ready' in a way that will guide high school instruction for the kids who prefer moola moola to boola boola."
• Prof. Bernanke Instructs Congress--Again - "This deficit spending problem 'is not 10 years away, it affects the markets today,' Bernanke replied to a question to Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the only person on the [House Financial Services] committee who appears to not be a few peas short of a casserole, upon which committee chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) cut off this line of questioning."
• What to Expect in November - "[Alan I. Abramowitz's] model has a result that will startle many of our readers: Republicans will pick up 37 House seats in November. That is remarkably close to the 40 seats the GOP needs to take outright control of the House."
• Pictures of a Market Crash: Beware the Ides of March, And What Follows After - "There are a fair number of private and public forecasters with whom I speak that anticipate a significant market decline in March. As you know I tend to agree, but with the important caveat that we are in a very different monetary landscape than the last time the Fed engaged in quantitative easing, the early 1930's.
  . . .
  Although one cannot see it just yet in the fog of corrupted government statistics, the economy is not improving and the US Consumers are flat on their back, scraping by for the most part, except for the upper percentiles who were made fat by the credit bubble, and are still extracting rents from it.
  
  There are still far too many otherwise responsible people who are not taking the situation with the high seriousness it deserves."
• Federalism and the Akaka BillFederalism and the Akaka Bill - "There is also a second potential federalism problem with the Akaka bill. By authorizing the creation of a tribal government for native Hawaiians, Congress is carving out a new sovereign entity within the territory of the existing state of Hawaii. It’s far from clear that Congress has the power to do such a thing under the Constitution. Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution states that 'no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.' The new Hawaiian tribal government may not have powers great enough for it to count as a 'State' within the meaning of Article IV. Still, the federally mandated creation of a new sovereign entity within the boundaries of an existing state is constitutionally dubious. It is not authorized by the enumerated powers of Congress."
• World's Smallest Political Quiz - "Take the Quiz now and find out where you fit on the political map!"

Shame On You, Rhonda Smith
She then sold the car to someone else....

• Odeon Cinemas Admit The Experience At Their Theaters Is So Bad It Can't Compete With Your Home Theater - "We've seen this before, but it's still really incredible. The Odeon movie theater chain is apparently refusing to show the new Alice in Wonderland film, directed by Tim Burton, in the UK, Ireland and Italy, because Disney is (smartly) trying to shorten the "window" between the cinema release and the DVD release. Basically, what Odeon is admitting here is that it knows the experience of going to its theaters is so bad that it simply can't compete with watching the movie at home. This is a rather stunning admission by Odeon and probably should make you think twice before going to any Odeon theaters."
• Superwoman syndrome fuels pill-pop culture - "Almost 6 percent of American women, that's 7.5 million adult women, report using prescription medicines for a boost of energy, a dose of calm or other non-medical reasons, according to the latest numbers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
  
  'Many may not consider what they're doing abuse because they're using a prescribed drug,' says Susan R.B. Weiss, chief of NIDA's Science Policy Branch. 'Many of these medications are being taken as performance-enhancers.'
  
  While street drug use has been declining in recent years, prescription drug abuse has been up since the 1990s.
  
  The trend seems to be partly driven by more and more women popping pills. While men make up the majority of abusers of street drugs, including meth, cocaine and heroin, women are just as likely to abuse prescription pills as men."
• Rep. Souder And The Denso Distraction - "News that the FBI had raided three Japanese supplier companies in the Detroit area came in the middle of yesterday’s epic Toyota hearings, adding to the day’s chaos and misinformation. The FBI said clearly at the time that Denso, Tokai Riko and Yazaki were raided as part of an antitrust investigation, which we now know [via Reuters] involves alleged cartel activities in the wiring harness supply market, and involves European firms like France’s Leoni as well. Despite the fact that Denso and Yazaki are cooperating with investigators, and that the US raids appear to be in support of an EU investigation, Rep Mark Souder (R-IN) took the opportunity to connect the Denso raid with the Toyota recall hearings in shameless style. And all to help clear the name of the US-based supplier CTS, which has been blamed for the sticky pedal recall, which just so happens to be in Rep. Souder’s district."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• Bad Check Scams Expanding and "Improving" - "whatever you think you know about cashier’s checks and certified checks being secure simply doesn’t apply any more. Some forged bank checks are so good that you cannot distinguish them from the real thing simply by looking at them. Please make sure that your staff, your colleagues, your clients and your friends understand this.
  . . .
  A new wrinkle is the scammer calling other professionals (like real estate agents) to get the names of local lawyers and then using that person’s name when they contact the lawyer to give them more credibility. A referral from a local businessperson isn’t going to be a scammer, right? There are reports of this fraud expanding and that is why this is a good topic for a law firm client newsletter. A person who is trying to sell a house might hear from a foreigner who is going to move to the state and wants to buy the house. They send a large certified check as a deposit and then a few days later note that a tragedy has occurring preventing them from moving. They ask the person to return part of the deposit, keeping a nice portion for their trouble.
  
  While we have typically seen these checks in the mid six figures, Dan notes that the amounts are becoming lower to make them seem less suspicious. Let’s face it. Stealing $50,000 ten times a year is a pretty good living for a thief."
• Some Philosophy of the Gym - "I spent my lunch hour today at the gym across the street from my office. It’s a simple, compact affair, heavily economized in its use of space, split into three roughly-equal sections of weights, floor mats, and an aerobics area. The walls are heavily mirrored and it has three scales in different locations, at least two more than could be required by any practical consideration. Every weekday, the gym swells for the morning, lunch and evening rushes, as hundreds of my colleagues and coworkers pour into the sweaty, crowded, clanking dungeon.
  . . .
  OK, sure. I’ll buy the health explanation from the 40-year-old who spends a half hour on the treadmill, three times a week. Maybe they do some light weights too, because their doctors told them it was a good idea. I think they’d be better off, physically and spiritually, going hiking with their friends, tobogganing with their kids, or having sex with their spouses, but I will at least grant that they are trudging away to extend and improve their lives. The question then becomes: How fractured, lonely, and atomized has our society become, that the most popular form of exercise is the monotonous, low-intensity self-torture that goes on under the soul-sucking fluorescent lights of GoodLife Fitness? Activities that make your heart pump faster are not hard to find. Dreary hours on the exercise bicycle are the norm because we have chosen to make it so. Because we are sick, and for whatever reason our desire to connect with other people is so weak that we prefer a solitary workout over game of touch football.
  . . .
  Regardless of their motivation -- sex appeal, an unhealthy desire to be unnaturally healthy, or just the need to distract themselves from an otherwise boring, lonely and unconnected life -- the characters in the gym are a uniquely depressing bunch, shackled by sweatbands and malaise."
• N.Y. Firm Faces Bankruptcy from $164,000 E-Banking Loss - "Karen McCarthy, owner of Merrick, N.Y. based Little & King LLC, a small promotions company, discovered on Monday, Feb. 15 that her firm’s bank account had been emptied the previous Friday. McCarthy said she immediately called her bank -- Cherry Hill, N.J. based TD Bank -- and learned that between Feb. 10 and Feb. 12, unknown thieves had made five wire transfers out of the account to two individuals and two companies with whom the McCarthys had never had any prior business."
• Nicholas Kristof on toxins and autism - "Kristof doesn't note that identical twins both are autistic ninety percent or more of the time (conditional on one of the twins being autistic), yet the concordance is much lower for fraternal twins. That militates in favor of genetic explanations, although the mechanics of transmission are poorly understood. It's wrong to cite genetics as explaining one-quarter of autism cases or to imply that genetics do not explain three-quarters. There are recent studies which look for correlated genes across autistics and find less than overwhelming results and perhaps this is what he has in mind. More accurately, there is a common problem with finding "simple" genetic markers for traits which are very likely or even certain to be genetic. The degree of correlation across genetic patterns we can find should not be taken as a measure of how many autistic cases -- or any other condition -- can be explained by genetics.
  . . .
  Cross-sectional studies, spanning decades of age groups, suggest a roughly constant rate of autism, even when environmental toxins are changing considerably over those lengthy time periods. Plenty of other studies relate autism clusters successfully to non-toxin factors, such as parental education or supply-side services or standards of diagnosis.
  
  There are likely well over 50 million autistics in the world and most of them have not had significant exposure to the cited toxins. While there are some plausible heterogeneities within autism, it is necessary to ask whether 'genes *or* toxins' is one of those and probably it is not."

America, These Are Your Leaders: Maxine Waters Edition
CBS follows up with a reasonable question: "Is Maxine Waters really as dumb as she seems?"

• MagicJack dials wrong number in legal attack on Boing Boing - "Gadget maker MagicJack recently lost a defamation lawsuit that it filed against Boing Boing. The judge dismissed its case and ordered it to pay us more than $50,000 in legal costs.
  
  The Florida-based VOIP company promotes a USB dongle that allows subscribers to make free or inexpensive phone calls over the internet. I posted in April 2008 about its terms of service--which include the right to analyze customers' calls--and various iffy characteristics of its website.
  
  We had no idea that it would file a baseless lawsuit to try and shut me up, that CEO Dan Borislow would offer to buy our silence after disparaging his own lawyers, or that MagicJack would ultimately face legal consequences for trying to intimidate critics.
  
  At several points in the process, we could have taken a check and walked away: as it is, the award doesn't quite cover our costs. But we don't like being bullied, and we wanted the chance to tell anyone else threatened by this company what to expect.
  . . .
  We would not agree to keep the actual legal dispute confidential under any circumstances. However, we offered not to publish details of our legal costs or their settlement if Borislow would donate $25,000 to charity. MagicJack, however, offered to pay our legal bill only if we'd agree to keep the whole dispute confidential; when we refused, Borislow wrote that he would 'see us in court.' Nonetheless, we're happy with the outcome. The irony for MagicJack is that the proceedings are public record, so the silence it sought was effectively worthless."
• Netflix Paid Los Gatos $2.5 Million in Sales Tax in 2009 - "The Los Gatos Observer reports that Netflix paid $2.5 million in sales tax in 2009."
• What Am I Doing Here? Tall Buildings and High Anxiety in Las Vegas - "A note on Las Vegas nomenclature: It’s gaming, not gambling. Gambling is a foolish activity that can only end in tears. Gaming is harmless entertainment. Please keep them straight.
  . . .
  Survived 'Viva Elvis® by Cirque de Soleil™,' billed as “a harmonious fusion of dance, acrobatics, and live music.” It is not harmonious. It is an assault on the senses. Feel slightly guilty that I had my fingers jammed in my ears for the entire show with one of CityCenter’s PR reps sitting next to me.
  . . .
  The lobby of the Mandarin Oriental smells like fancy soap, and the Sky Bar has panoramic views. But I start to feel claustrophobic and duck out of the event. For a certain type of person, Vegas is a non-stop party. For me, it induces a kind of persistent low-grade anxiety. There’s something dystopic about the place generally, and CityCenter is starting to feel like the world of Blade Runner come to life. I head back to my room, shut the black-out curtains and lie in bed. More people commit suicide in Las Vegas than in any other city in the United States.
  . . .
  Am I the only person not entranced by the Bellagio fountains? They’re visually impressive and a technological feat, fine, but it’s hard for me to enjoy anything accompanied by the schlocky music of Elton John.
  . . .
  Ditch the tour to head out to the Strip so I can buy a souvenir for my daughter. (A small stuffed animal in the Aria gift shop goes for $68.) Walk down to the New York New York complex, which has an air of squalid desperation. How it will survive with CityCenter and other new developments competing for business is beyond me. A friend quips that the only way they could fill the place is 'if they reenact 9/11 every morning.' No comment.
  . . .
  Drinks at Prime Meats, in Brooklyn, with my wife. Realistically, this place is as much an artifice as anything on the Strip, a re-imagining of a 19th-century saloon, complete with polished bar, antique typography, Edison bulbs. Why, then, does it feel so much more honest? Because its aesthetic is filtered through a contemporary sensibility? Because it seems a natural part of a vibrant neighborhood? Is this all bullshit I invent to make myself feel more comfortable? Could the real problem with Las Vegas -- my real problem with Las Vegas -- be that its commercial imperatives are simply too transparent?"
• Ten Things I Learned While Trading for Victor Niederhoffer - "6.) Warren Buffett. Victor is not a fan of Warren Buffett. This forced me to look at Buffett in a whole new way. Is Buffett a value investor? What other tricks of the trade has Buffett used over the years? I ended up reading every biography of Buffett, going through four decades of SEC filings, and pouring over not only his Berkshire letters but his prior letters from his hedge fund days (1957-1969). The result was my book, 'Trade Like Warren Buffett.'
  . . .
  9.) Keep Life Interesting. Victor surrounds himself by games and the people who enjoy them. When I knew him, he took regular checkers lessons, played tennis every day, and has some of the oddest collections I’ve ever seen. He stands out on a crowded city street and seems to spend part of each day seeking out new and interesting experiences. He often asked me what I’d been reading and if it was trading related he was disappointed. Trading is ultimately a window into the psyche of the world at that moment."
• “Tin Whiskers” Implicated In Unintended Acceleration Problems - "A number of articles have appeared implicating tin whiskers as a potential source or complicating factor in Toyota’s (and other manufacturers’) unintended acceleration issues. The phenomenon of tin whiskers, a crystalline metallurgical phenomenon involving the spontaneous growth of tiny, filiform hairs from a metallic surface, can cause short circuits and arcing in electric equipment. First discovered in phone switching equipment in the 1940’s, the addition of lead to tin solder largely eliminated the problem. But the push to eliminate lead from electronic assemblies has led to a nasty re-growth of the pesky whiskers."
• It's The Execution That Matters, Not The Idea - "For years we've tried to explain the difference between ideas and execution, and how lots of people have ideas (in fact, many have the same ideas entirely independently), but without good execution, those ideas aren't really worth much at all. This point comes up a lot in the debates we have over the patent system -- with patent system supporters often overvaluing the idea part, and grossly underestimating the importance of execution. Often this is because they've never built a real business, and don't realize how little an initial idea plays into the final product. The two are often oceans apart. But stopping others from executing well (or forcing them to fork over a ton of money) just because they executed well where you did not? That doesn't seem like encouraging innovation or promoting progress at all."

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

February 28, 2010 09:17 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 24 (24th Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 24 (Twenty-Fourth Amendment)

Amendment XXIV.

Passed by Congress August 27, 1962. Ratified January 23, 1964.

Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

More

• Twenty-fourth Amendment - Wikipedia
• Twenty-fourth Amendment - Findlaw

A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 27, 2010 11:27 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

Friday humor

Smart Engineer





Charlie Brooker's How to Report the News - Newswipe - BBC Four

February 26, 2010 08:17 PM   Link    Humor    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Legislative Day"

Legislative Day: Time a chamber meets after an adjournment until the time it next adjourns.

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

February 26, 2010 12:17 PM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

Capitol Hill Workshop, 3-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net, March 3-5, 2010

Capitol Hill Workshop: Politics, Policy, and Process

Intensive 3-day congressional operations workshop

Congressional decision-making is driven by politics, policy and process. In this engaging workshop, Washington-based experts discuss these 3 P's and help you understand the complete policy-making process.

You’ll get a solid understanding of:

• Congressional operations and the legislative process
  
• How public and foreign policy become law
  
• Congressional politics and leadership
  
• Congressional budgeting today
  
• The role of OMB in the legislative process
  
• Effective communication with Congress
  
• How the media covers the Hill
  
• Current campaign and election trends
  
• How members of Congress advance their legislative, public policy and political agendas
  
• How personal and committee staff work
  
• How you can build win/win relationships with staffers

Attend a congressional hearing and see the process in action.

March 3-5, 2010, 8:30 am - 4 pm all three days.

Approved for 1.7 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: On Capitol Hill in Washington, DC

This is a required course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations and for the Certificate in Communication and Advocacy.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see CapitolHillWorkshop.com

February 25, 2010 07:17 PM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/25/10

7 of the most powerful persuasion techniques by expert Robert Cialdini

• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• Is it ‘raining’ hard enough? - "Faced with historic revenue drops, states have tapped their rainy day funds in fiscal 2009 and 2010 at levels not seen since the 2001 recession to help close budget gaps totaling some $290 billion. The decision to go to these funds has renewed the debate about how much states should be setting aside in these reserves and when to use the money. A few states, meanwhile, have been able to leave their funds intact. Texas, for example, is sitting on $8 billion in its fund and has relied instead on federal stimulus money to balance its budget.
  
  It’s a common perception that rainy day funds are like the couple’s savings account and can be spent in emergencies. But they actually are more like 401(k) or other accounts that put contraints on the funds.
  . . .
  But a handful of states haven’t gone that route at all and can boast that their rainy day funds remain essentially untouched. Texas has so much set aside that its $8 billion and Alaska’s reserves of $6.9 billion are badly skewing the national average of what states hold in their rainy day fund and ending balances in their budgets. Figuring the two states in, the average comes to 4.8 percent of states’ annual expenditures. Without them, it’s a paltry 2.7 percent, according to NASBO. That’s far below the 5 percent that many budget experts and bond rating agencies typically recommend states hold in reserves. "
• Morning Must Reads -- All Obama, all the time - "They say the legislation was not enough of him and too much of Congress. He was too restrained in using his gifts to convince the undecided and smite his enemies.
  
  Letting Obama be Obama may win the primaries or a debate with John McCain, but it’s not going to convince voters that a warmed-over version of Harry Reid’s health plan is worth $125 billion a year to a bankrupt government and a good deal of disruption to the current standards of access and quality.
  
  Obama has talked about the plan in two States of the Union, a special joint session of Congress called just for that purpose, more than 30 speeches, an online ad, and at least a dozen weekly radio addresses, but still the electorate resists.
  
  In fact, the more people hear about the plan, the less they like it. But the solution from the president’s crew: More Obama!"
• Ignorance is Not Stupidity, Redux - "If voters tend to be ignorant and often illogical in their evaluation of the information they know, transferring more power to government in order to adopt paternalistic policies will only increase the impact of the types of cognitive errors paternalists seek to correct."
• TSA Detains Possible Terrorist Armed With Flashcards - "Nicholas George, who is from Philadelphia, is a student at Pomona College in California and is studying Arabic there. This is a good thing. We need people to study and learn Arabic so they can translate things and see if anybody else who speaks Arabic is trying to kill us. To learn a foreign language, sometimes one uses flashcards. Sometimes, especially if one wants to become fluent, one actually travels to the countries where the language is spoken, and that will mean your passport will show that you have been to the Middle East.
  
  The suspiciously stamped passport, and the über-suspicious flashcards, neither of which an actual terrorist would have been carrying, caused TSA agents in Philadelphia to detain George, handcuff him, and interrogate him for four hours. He missed his flight and had to travel the next day. ACLU contacted. Lawsuit filed. Lesson almost certainly not learned."
• Basically, It's Over: A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin. - "Basicland's investment and commercial bankers were hostile to change. Like the objecting economists, the bankers wanted change exactly opposite to change wanted by the Good Father. Such bankers provided constructive services to Basicland. But they had only moderate earnings, which they deeply resented because Basicland's casinos--which provided no such constructive services--reported immoderate earnings from their bucket-shop systems. Moreover, foreign investment bankers had also reported immoderate earnings after building their own bucket-shop systems--and carefully obscuring this fact with ingenious twaddle, including claims that rational risk-management systems were in place, supervised by perfect regulators. Naturally, the ambitious Basicland bankers desired to prosper like the foreign bankers. And so they came to believe that the Good Father lacked any understanding of important and eternal causes of human progress that the bankers were trying to serve by creating more bucket shops in Basicland.
  
  Of course, the most effective political opposition to change came from the gambling casinos themselves. This was not surprising, as at least one casino was located in each legislative district. The casinos resented being compared with cancer when they saw themselves as part of a long-established industry that provided harmless pleasure while improving the thinking skills of its customers.
  
  As it worked out, the politicians ignored the Good Father one more time, and the Basicland banks were allowed to open bucket shops and to finance the purchase and carry of real securities with extreme financial leverage. A couple of economic messes followed, during which every constituency tried to avoid hardship by deflecting it to others. Much counterproductive governmental action was taken, and the country's credit was reduced to tatters. Basicland is now under new management, using a new governmental system. It also has a new nickname: Sorrowland."

GoMeals iPhone App Makes Food Management Easier for Diabetics

• Two Cheers for Credit Cards - "Ever since someone in grad school deviously introduced me to the concept of "irrational" debt aversion, I have been carrying credit-card balances that are far too high. Believe me, I understand the tricks these companies pull, like the clause in fine print where you unwittingly pledged away your firstborn.
  . . .
  The most obvious benefit of credit cards is that they offer a very flexible and convenient method for individuals to borrow money.
  . . .
  Ironically, the widespread use of credit cards actually promotes the safety of an individual's assets, or at the very least allows a much wider scope for purchasing without a proportional increase in the danger of theft.
  . . .
  Besides their intrinsic honesty, the ultimate reason most people pay their credit-card bills -- enough so that the industry is profitable -- is that they don't want to ruin their credit score."
• LAUSD's Dance of the Lemons: Why firing the desk-sleepers, burnouts, hotheads and other failed teachers is all but impossible - "But the [LA] Weekly has found, in a five-month investigation, that principals and school district leaders have all but given up dismissing such teachers. In the past decade, LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district's 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance -- and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.
  
  During our investigation, in which we obtained hundreds of documents using the California Public Records Act, we also discovered that 32 underperforming teachers were initially recommended for firing, but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight. Moreover, 66 unnamed teachers are being continually recycled through a costly mentoring and retraining program but failing to improve, and another 400 anonymous teachers have been ordered to attend the retraining."
• How to avoid becoming senile: - "Don't retire. You know the old expression, 'Use it or lose it?' It's correct. Nobody's saying you need to do back-breaking work until you're 94 but retirement often involves too little mental stimulation and that can hasten mental decline:"
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• “Dean” Karen H. Rothenberg, Come on Down! - "Dean Karen Rothenberg, 'come on down!' You’re the next contestant on this week’s exciting episode of Big Debt! Step right up to Contestant’s Row and compete for millions in Stafford loan loot, alumni shakedowns, and lush government subsidies. All yours for the taking Karen, here behind the big doors on The Price is Right!
  
  For those not in our studio audience, this bulletin: News broke over the weekend that former dean of laughable TTT toilet U. Maryland Law, Karen Rothenberg, received $350,000 in compensation for several sabbaticals she apparently never took. Like most pseudo-academic lowlifes who suckle at the Stafford Loan teat, Karen’s apparently corrupt as well as lazy. The incident reeks of backroom dealing and criminal shadiness, all par for the course in the cesspool of today’s education racket. Read about it here:"
• Full Genome Sequencing Helps Create Personalized Blood Cancer Test - "Clinical researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new methodology for creating individualized cancer blood tests based on DNA sequencing. Since it is now becoming more affordable to detect cancer markers in free floating DNA, those markers can be used as a template for a blood test to track the progress of cancer therapy."
• *The New Yorker* writes up Peter Chang and *China Star* - "Yes I know the article is gated but I wanted to blog the link anyway, out of sheer enthusiasm. It's a superb piece. China Star is my favorite Fairfax restaurant and it's the #1 restaurant for GMU blogger lunches and debates (though one of us hates it; can you guess which one? We make him go nonetheless). It's also where we take job candidates, at least the ones we respect. Even though Chang is now gone, the restaurant remains superb in the hands of his successors, who have kept many of his original recipes."

Advertising Is Content, Content Is Advertising, I'm On A Horse

• Aeron: Best office chair investment - "I've been testing an Aeron Chair since 2001 and I'm ready to say, 'Go for it.' Why now? Because I just realized that it is the cheapest chair I've ever owned. I’m 6’ 2”, 200-plus pounds, and put a lot of daily wear-and-tear on my chair. So I wasn’t surprised when, after eight years of use the seat cracked: I was sitting there and it gave way by about two inches. Except for an early problem with a slight wiggle in the base (which Herman Miller paid to have fixed) the chair has worked flawlessly."

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February 25, 2010 08:27 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 23 (23rd Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 23 (Twenty-Third Amendment)

Amendment XXIII.

Passed by Congress June 16, 1960. Ratified March 29, 1961.

Section 1.
The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct:

A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

More

• Twenty-third Amendment - Wikipedia
• Twenty-third Amendment - Findlaw

2008 election night returns include 3 electoral votes for the District of Columbia.

A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 24, 2010 09:07 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

Capitol Hill Workshop, 3-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

Capitol Hill Workshop: Politics, Policy, and Process

Intensive 3-day congressional operations workshop

Congressional decision-making is driven by politics, policy and process. In this engaging workshop, Washington-based experts discuss these 3 P's and help you understand the complete policy-making process.

You’ll get a solid understanding of:

• Congressional operations and the legislative process
  
• How public and foreign policy become law
  
• Congressional politics and leadership
  
• Congressional budgeting today
  
• The role of OMB in the legislative process
  
• Effective communication with Congress
  
• How the media covers the Hill
  
• Current campaign and election trends
  
• How members of Congress advance their legislative, public policy and political agendas
  
• How personal and committee staff work
  
• How you can build win/win relationships with staffers

Attend a congressional hearing and see the process in action.

March 3-5, 2010, 8:30 am - 4 pm all three days.

Approved for 1.7 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: On Capitol Hill in Washington, DC

This is a required course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations and for the Certificate in Communication and Advocacy.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see CapitolHillWorkshop.com

February 23, 2010 04:27 PM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

The Defense Budget, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

The Defense Budget

Held each year in late-February, this course concentrates on the President's new fiscal year defense budget proposal and how Congress responds to it. Experienced faculty members explore and study key documents, charts and graphs, budget allocations and projections provided in this budget.

The defense budget request is carefully analyzed, focusing on winners and losers, DoD's budget authority by title, weapons systems, budget by service, military transformation and Congress' response.

February 26, 2010, 8:30 am - 4:15 pm

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 (Gallery Place / Chinatown Metro stop)

This is an elective course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see TheDefenseBudget.com

February 23, 2010 09:37 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/22/10

School Accused Of Spying On Kids In Their Homes With Spyware That Secretly Activated Webcams

• The President's Budget, February 23, 2010
• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• State and Local governments going broke - "While union membership has fallen in the private sector, many government employees work under union contracts. Combine that with the ability of union support to sway election results (and have union government employees serving in legislatures) at the state and local level and it's a recipe for fiscal disaster."
• States Sink in Benefits Hole - "The pension problems started well before the recession. Even in good times, states were skipping pension payments, leaving larger holes to fill in future years. State legislatures also increased benefit levels without setting aside extra money to pay for them.
  
  As a result, annual pension costs for states and participating local governments more than doubled, to more than $64 billion, from fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2008, said Susan Urahn, the research group's managing director."
• Just What I Needed - "let me address the gold / silver / fiat money question.
  
  I have just never understood why there is so much concern over currency, as if this were the number one problem. No question that a fiat money does in fact give the government enormous power. But the currency is more a reflection of power the state already has, rather than a cause of it.
  . . .
  Here's the thing: the government doesn't control the money supply NOW. If you have a credit card, or several, you can create large amounts of new money, all by yourself. Anytime you secure a new line of credit, and actually spend it.... there goes the money supply. And if the government buys bonds, in 'open market operations,' that doesn't mean that banks will lend. The velocity of money is endogenous, as we have seen recently as credit dried up and people (and banks) held much larger cash balances in the forms of savings and reserves.
  
  Again, I'm not denying that a fiat money creates enormous power for the state. Of course it does. But the war on drugs, the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, restrictions on the right to marry, restrictions on hiring, regulations and taxes on small business, involuntary annexation....I could go on. Why would you start with money, as the number one problem?"
• MSM denial over IRS bomber's left-wing discontent - "Before crashing his plane into an IRS office building, Joe Stack wrote and posted online a diatribe against insurance and drug companies, private health care, George W. Bush, and the Catholic Church. Subtract out the subtle hints at his planned terror act, and a similar rant could have appeared in some form on any of several left-wing message boards.
  
  Despite this, it isn't just willfully blind posters on those same left-wing message boards that are trying to insinuate some connection between the Tea Party movement and this apparent tax-evader and suicide pilot, who railed against Congress for failing to pass health reform."
• School Accused Of Spying On Kids In Their Homes With Spyware That Secretly Activated Webcams - "A whole bunch of you are sending in this absolutely horrifying story of a school district outside of Philadelphia that apparently gave its students laptops that included hidden software that allowed district officials to secretly turn on the laptops' webcams and monitor student activities, no matter where they were. This all came to light when a student was disciplined for 'improper behavior in his home' with the evidence being a photo of the kid from his laptop webcam. The district is now being sued for this. It's rather stunning that anyone thought this was a good idea. Secretly spying on children in their homes when they have a very real expectation of privacy is downright horrifying. It's not hard to see how this could be abused in very dangerous ways."
• Buy an iPhone or get a million dollars - (wise cartoon)
• Where Did Our Real Wealth Go? - "In other words, Greece is the canary in the mine of the impending crack-up of the modern welfare state. It is a great gift to us all, this example. A year ago, the socialists, even as they were juggling and falsifying their books, were bragging that the Wall Street meltdown was a referendum -- and capitalism was doomed. Now, the entire socialist dream is exposed and even the most ardent statist knows that there is no longer enough 'others' to pay the tab.
  
  The poor EU learned that the Greek siesta, the 10PM Athenian dinners, the state power company vans at the beaches in the workday afternoons, the kafenions full of 50-year-old men at 11AM, the angry students perpetually in the streets at each hinted reform, and the moonlighting telephone employees all came at the expense of far harder-working Scandinavian and German socialists, who apparently now realize a nice two weeks each year on Santorini or Crete aren’t worth billions of their own Euros in rescue bailouts.
  . . .
  So for a while longer, we need the miner, the oil pumper, the farmer, the fabricator, the carpenter, the road-builder, the railroad guy, the cement layer, the chemist, the computer engineer -- and the system that allows them all to create wealth unimpeded by government and in an environment in which the citizen who benefits from their labor appreciates their industry.
  
  Yes, before we have the actor, the writer, the professor, the insurer, the investor, the regulator, and the politicians, we need the elemental among us to find or create material wealth. We, the sloganeering class, forgot that, and so subsidize our high living either on borrowed money or the prior productive investment of those now in the grave yards."
• Putting “Holds” on Hold - "What is missed in the debate over holds is whether the Senate should be moving nominations by unanimous consent in the first place. President Obama’s supporters contend that his nominees deserve an up or down vote. Yet that is exactly what is required by a hold: an up or down vote. Holds do not have to be honored by the Majority Leader (else why doesn’t someone just place a hold on health care?). In fact, nominations are privileged motions, meaning the Majority Leader can bring up a nomination for debate and vote at any time."
• Get Over It because there will be no Housing Boom This Decade – 5 Factors That Will Drag Housing Down in the Next Ten Years. - "Now one month doesn’t make a trend of course but if you only listen to the real estate industry and banking cabal you would think that all of a sudden we are circa 2003 real estate. There is this pervasive speculative attitude once again in the air even in the face of a 12.4 percent unemployment rate. The unemployment situation was revised last month nationwide and the BLS upped the number of jobs lost in this recession from the 'low' 7 million to 8.4 million. So basically we were underestimating how 'good' things were for an entire year (the BLS has suspect numbers because of their methodology). Yet this is part of the new economic psychology where real data is ignored in exchange for bread and circus statistics and political theatre. The reality is we are not going to see any sort of housing boom for the next decade. In fact, housing will be weak for the next ten years (at least) regardless of what the government and Wall Street attempts to do.
  . . .
  With most conservative estimates, 25 percent of current mortgage holders are underwater. That is, they owe more on their home than it is worth.
  . . .
  Baby boomers to a large extent drove this housing bubble. Many had purchased in the 1990s so were able to ride the mega bubble or trade up in housing. Many also sucked the equity out of their homes to fill every nook and cranny with new stainless steel fridges and flat screen televisions. As the housing bubble ramped up they saw their housing porn shows telling them to purchase granite countertops because no home is complete without putting shiny rocks in your kitchen. But as the bubble of a decade recedes, people are left with artifacts of consumption and no real wealth. It isn’t like a cow that you can live off but these items are sitting there reflecting years of consumption. Massive gas sucking SUVs sit parked in the driveway ready to suck your wallet dry at the next trip to the gas station."
• Are prices going up or down? - "Meanwhile, John Williams at Shadowstats.com reports: 'Adjusted to pre-Clinton (1990) methodology, annual CPI eased to roughly 6.0% growth in January from to 6.1% in December, while the SGS-Alternate Consumer Inflation Measure, which reverses gimmicked changes to official CPI reporting methodologies back to 1980, rose to about 9.8% (9.76% for those using the extra digit) in January, versus 9.7% in December.'"
• Repeat after me: Opportunity Cost - "Holy half-wit, Batman! This person has zero concept of opportunity cost.
  
  Hard to tell, exactly, but I think the implied value of this person's time is about $6 per hour. So, if you are making minimum wage, by all means take his advice.
  
  Otherwise, read this, and stop shopping once you have to make a new reservation for $1 decrements in plane fare."
• Amnesty International and the World of International NGOs - "Be careful what you wish for when you wish for American decline. American decline would almost certainly entail the decline of those universal values and, along with them, the human monitors whose universal claims are unlikely to thrive under a multipolarity championed by, for example, China. (Perhaps the most depressing phenomenon in all this, however, is the Obama administration’s embrace of ideological decline in advance of any historically materialist (what we Marxists like to call 'objective') reason to do so. I refer particularly to the entirely unnecessary group hug of the demotion of free speech by the US at the UN Human Rights Council.)"
• Toyota: New State Farm Disclosures Trigger Accusations Of Lackadaisical NHTSA - "Akio Toyoda is spending the weekend in Japan, being prepped for his appearance in front of the modern day version of the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition, better known as a Congressional Hearing.
  
  According to Reuters, and as suggested by TTAC, Toyoda 'is likely to undergo intense preparation. Toyota may hire lawyers to drill him with mock questions, one consultant said. A company source said it had not yet been decided whether Toyoda would speak in Japanese or English, but the company has already contacted some translation companies.'
  
  The weekend drill was interrupted by the news that State Farm had informed the NHTSA as early as February 27, 2004, that the insurance company had five claims of unwanted acceleration in the 2002 Lexus ES 300 during the previous 12 months. Reuters broke the story, writing 'the insurer said earlier this month it had contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in late 2007. However, prompted by the public interest in Toyota, the insurer reviewed its records again and has now found that it contacted safety regulators initially in 2004.' All hell broke loose …"
• Great Moments in (Anti) Stimulus - "There were many reasons to oppose last year’s so-called stimulus legislation. But perhaps one of the most compelling reasons is that politicians and bureaucrats inevitably do really stupid things because the federal budget is a racket designed to funnel the maximum amount of money to powerful interest groups."

How a Movement is Made

• Poor Teen Sleeping Due To Lack Of Blue Light? - "The kids need more blue light in their classrooms in the morning to get their melatonin production and circadian cycle working correctly."
• Before You Go Locking Up All Of Those “Crazy” People… - "If we were to start locking up all of the people who exhibit warning signs for violent behavior, we would be committing a lot of Type I error, not to mention trouncing on people’s civil liberties. We’re then faced with a tradeoff- is it worth infringing on the rights of many people in order to prevent the few that turn out to be crazy from acting on their craziness? Given the often-made point that we all probably exhibit some sort of warning sign at one point or another, I’m guessing that that answer is a no. That said, the Huntsville woman shot her brother and wasn’t charged because her mom said it was an accident. Next time, maybe we’ll have a lesson on credibility and conflict of interest."
• Domestic Violence and Abuse: Signs of Abuse and Abusive Relationships - "Domestic violence and abuse can happen to anyone, yet the problem is often overlooked, excused, or denied. This is especially true when the abuse is psychological, rather than physical. Emotional abuse is often minimized, yet it can leave deep and lasting scars.
  
  Noticing and acknowledging the warning signs and symptoms of domestic violence and abuse is the first step to ending it. No one should live in fear of the person they love. If you recognize yourself or someone you know in the following warning signs and descriptions of abuse, don’t hesitate to reach out."
• Is Your Partner Emotionally Abusive? - "Just because you aren't getting smacked around doesn't mean you aren't suffering. In fact, verbal abuse and emotional abuse in relationships is on the rise, and the psychological damage it inflicts can be crippling. To escape this insidious torment, you have to be able to spot the symptoms."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."

LAPD hassles food trucks

• Why I'm Dropping Google - "For a company whose unofficial slogan is 'Don't Be Evil,' Google has been ignoring its so-called core value with alarming frequency as of late. And because of that, I decided to delete my Gmail account, along with all other Google services that I am able to do without. I have also deleted as much personal information as possible from my Google profile.
  . . .
  But not only does Google dominate the search (and, hence, advertising) market, it also knows a lot about you. By adding more and more 'free' services--free in exchange for the annoyance of ads, and for users' giving up their privacy--Google accumulates a wealth of information about your interests, your browsing habits, your contacts, the blogs you visit (using your Google profile), pictures of your home, and much more. (Do you know how much information Google has connected to your Gmail address? Check here: You may be surprised.) Not only does Google have this information on its servers, but if anyone were to be able to hack into your Google account, they'd have a wealth of information about you too (and your business, if you use Google Docs for business documents)."
• Reminder: You Don't Compete With Piracy By Being Lame, The DVD Edition - "It's a point we've tried to make over and over again: you don't compete with "piracy" by offering a product that's a lot worse. And yet, so many people do. A bunch of you have sent over the following image that highlights this in the DVD world (tragically, no one seems to know who made this image -- but if anyone knows, please tell us in the comments and we'll add it to the post). It shows how an unauthorized downloaded copy of The Matrix lets you start watching it immediately. But if you purchase the legitimate DVD, it forces you to sit through multiple FBI warnings and multiple trailers for other movies, with no ability to skip past them. It's humorous, but the point it makes is really important. When your product is less valuable (and yes, that includes being more annoying) than the unauthorized alternatives, you're going to be hard pressed to get people to agree to pay you for your product. "

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February 22, 2010 09:57 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 22 (22nd Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 22 (Twenty-Second Amendment)

Amendment XXII.

Passed by Congress March 21, 1947. Ratified February 27, 1951.

Section 1.
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

More

• Twenty-second Amendment - Wikipedia
• Twenty-second Amendment - Findlaw

Hell-Bent for Election 1944 Part 1

Hell-Bent for Election 1944 Part 2

FDR Accepts Nomination For 4th Term

The Truth About Taxes 1939

A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 21, 2010 10:37 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Resolving Clause"

Resolving Clause: First section of a joint resolution that gives legal force to the measure when enacted: "Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Unites States of America in Congress assembled..."

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

February 19, 2010 09:17 AM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 21 (21st Amendment )

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 21 (Twenty-First Amendment)

Amendment XXI.

Passed by Congress February 20, 1933. Ratified December 5, 1933.

Section 1.
The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2.
The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

More

• Twenty-first Amendment - Wikipedia
• Twenty-first Amendment - Findlaw

Stay Wet on Repeal Day (Part 1)


Prohibition Repealed, Industry Booms ca.1933


Budweiser Prohibition Repeal Announcement


Prohibition Doesn't Work!

A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 19, 2010 07:17 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/18/10

The Truth About Taxes 1939

• The President's Budget, February 23, 2010
• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• another one bites the dust - "Evan Bayh is the latest to announce that he won't face the voters this fall.
  
  Will the last Demo pol left please turn out the lights?
  
  While I think it's very funny how little fight appears left in the Dems, please don't think I am pleased about the possible return of the Republicans. Heaven forfend. I am kind of a 'pox on both your houses' guy."
• Generosity and heroics of the Berlin airlift - "After gigantic sacrifices, the United States was finally able in 1945 to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Only three years later, the United States found itself making even more sacrifices related to Germany, but this time to stave off starvation in West Berlin, a bombed-out city where countless former Nazis lived.
  
  Richard Reeves, a prolific journalist-historian, decided to write a book about what became known as the Berlin airlift because so many Americans today know little or nothing about the seemingly impossible - and highly unlikely - humanitarian mission.
  
  Before starting to write Daring Young Men, Reeves, born in 1937, had been contemplating the changed perception of the United States throughout the world. At the end of World War II, it seemed, citizens of other nations looked upon the United States as bighearted, willingly sharing its disproportionate wealth. But during the first decade of the 21st century, many inhabitants of other lands viewed the United States 'as arrogant, self-righteous, brutal, even a monster using our very substantial power to try to enforce a new order, a kind of global neo-imperialism,' Reeves writes."
• Test Drive It! - "When shopping for clothes, you try them on to see if they fit. When buying a car, you take it for a test spin and check out the CARFAX report. When looking at a home, you tour it and hire an inspector.
  
  It's a shame that our young people don't take this same approach when deciding to go to law school. How, then, shall we "test drive" it? How can you make an informed decision? How do you know which side to believe: the optimistic law school admissions staff or the disgruntled JD Undergrounders? Underdogs, with a little research and soul-searching, you will come up with the truth."
• 3 Ways to Prepare for the CARD Act - "On February 22, 2010, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act, better known as CARD, will go into effect and consumers can start breathing a little easier as some of the worst abuses in the industry are curtailed. Don’t start celebrating just yet, though. We predict that issuers are going to get creative seeking profits elsewhere, so it’s important to take the time to understand what changes may be coming in a few weeks -- and how to protect yourself now.
  
  Below find our predictions for how card issuers will find new profits in the days after the legislation takes effect, and also three suggestions for staying ahead."
• The government has your baby's DNA - "When Annie Brown's daughter, Isabel, was a month old, her pediatrician asked Brown and her husband to sit down because he had some bad news to tell them: Isabel carried a gene that put her at risk for cystic fibrosis.
  
  While grateful to have the information -- Isabel received further testing and she doesn't have the disease -- the Mankato, Minnesota, couple wondered how the doctor knew about Isabel's genes in the first place. After all, they'd never consented to genetic testing.
  
  It's simple, the pediatrician answered: Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it's often done without the parents' consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.
  
  In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies' DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center."
• Scalia on the Right to Secede - "Eugene says the Civil War didn’t settle whether there is a right to secede. Ilya agrees. But it looks like Justice Scalia might disagree."
• Instruction and Recall: - "Eugene notes the interesting question of whether a state could pass an advisory recall of a Senator. As I discussed in one of my papers on the 17th Amendment (see this article, pages 171–173 especially) for the Framers the issues of 'instruction' and 'recall' were tied up together. Under the Articles of Confederation, state legislatures had the power of both instruction and recall. Under the Constitution, however, state legislatures continued to exercise the power of instruction, but no longer had the power of recall for failure to follow instructions. Senators were understood as being 'ambassadors' of the state to the national government, thus it followed that they could be instructed.
  
  The absence of a power of recall was a major sticking point for the Anti-Federalists, who anticipated that without the power of recall, the power of instruction would be largely a dead letter. "
• Yes the Senate is broken (but not in the way you might think) - "Congress is broken because it has acquired more power than mere mortals can handle.
  
  I really don't know how we are going to fix that, but by all means, let's not pretend that changing some rules of procedure will fix the problems in our broken legislative branch."
• Rhode Island District Fires All Its HS Teachers - "Performance, it seems is abysmal. The district’s high school graduation rate is said to be less than 50 percent, and things have been bad for a long time. Charged with turning things around, the superintendent asked teachers (who are making between $70,000 and $78,000 vs. the town’s median income of $22,000) to work an extra 25 minutes a day, provide tutoring on a rotating schedule, and have lunch with the kids once a week. The union said no. So superintendent Frances Gallo went reluctantly to plan B: she fired the school’s entire staff.
  
  Union leaders seem to think that the old rules still apply. Maybe they do, for now. The union plans to challenge the firings and it remains to be seen if they’ll find a way to reverse them.
  
  But America is reaching a tipping point after which the old rules will go out the window. "
• Was Alaska a Good Buy? - "The U.S. bought Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7.2 million. At the time the purchase was derided as 'Seward's Folly,' but today it's common to compare the purchase price with Alaska's gross state product of $45 billion and claim it a resounding success. But is that the right comparison?"
• Tom Hoenig and The Fed - "On Tuesday, he once again spoke on the true threat of inflation, and noted that maybe, just maybe, massive and crushing amounts of debt aren't the most wonderful things in the world. Last month, he was the lone voice of dissent against the Fed's continued policy of full-bore inflation and easy money.
  
  Hoenig, president of the Kansas City Fed, was also probably the only high ranking Fed official who ever expressed doubts about the true state of the economy back in 2007. While Hoenig was doubting, Bernanke and company were still touting the 'fundamentally sound' American economy.
  
  I'm not trying to make Hoenig out to be some kind of hero or sage, but Hoenig's lone dissent helps to highlight just how divorced from reality most of the Fed's leadership is. As a central banker, Hoenig is part of the problem, but a tight money policy is certainly better than a loose money policy in an age in which there is so little capital accumulation and in which the market-rate of interest would undoubtedly be many times the artificial Fed-set rate."
• Eleven Principles of Financial Reform - "The corruption of the socio-political system runs deep, and is embedded in the national consciousness as a reflexive set of slogans (the big lies) that substitute for practical thought and effective policy formation. The examples of thinkspeak are numerous. People become parrots for their favorite corporate news/opinion channel, to which they become emotionally addicted, because otherwise, reality is too painful and complex to face. And so they are blinded and cut off from productive and even civil discourse, trapped within deep wells of subjectivity.
  . . .
  What will it take? It took the Japanese about twenty years of economic privation to finally get rid of the LDP political party that had ruled the country since the Second World War. It may take ten years of stagflation and economic hardship for the American people to wake up and put an end to the crony capitalism that has captured its two party political system. A good start would be to continue to defeat incumbents from both parties, and to start electing viable third party candidates."
• Health Reform Moves to the States: The Case of Minnesota - "The apparent collapse of health reform in Washington has shifted attention back to the question of what (if anything) states can do to control prices, improve the delivery system, and/or expand coverage at time when revenues are collapsing.
  
  Over the course of the next few weeks, Governing will take a look at several alternatives being proposed. We'll start today by highlighting the ideas of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty."

A scene from Mr. Hulot's Holiday

• Mamma Mia! - "Q. When did you begin to plan your wedding?
  
  A. Well, actually, I didn’t plan my wedding; my mother did.
  
  Q. Did you participate in your mother’s planning of your wedding?
  
  A. No. My family is Italian.
  
  Q. When did your mother begin to plan your wedding?
  
  Q. When I was born."
• Let's move away from TV, computer and video games for healthier future - "So I'm somewhat hurt that Mrs. Obama didn't ask me before she announced her initiative.
  
  I would have told her, 'You're a soccer mom -- have you ever seen an obese soccer player?'
  
  But rather than focus on physical activity, the 'Let's Move!' initiative focuses on top-down bureaucratic programs stressing nutrition."
• A lethal business model targets Middle America - "Sugar cane farmers from a tiny Mexican county use savvy marketing and low prices to push black-tar heroin in the United States."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• Hammer Time: Happy Returns - "Does retail always give you the best return when it comes to cars? The reflexive answer is ‘yes’. But the real answer is ‘It depends’. I’ve seen cars bought at dealer auctions that don’t have a chance in a felon’s hell of reclaiming their outrageous price. This week there was a Barney inspired purple 1998 Dodge Caravan with 118k that sold for $3000. That one will have to be financed to a hardcore Prince fan with a brood. A little while back I also saw this Farley inspired van go for $5800. That one is still at the dealer’s lot begging for monetary penance. Of course, these two extreme examples are somewhere between a lightning strike and a snow flurry in Atlanta. So what’s the norm?
  
  If we’re looking at ‘cash purchases’ for new cars, the public with rare exception pays the premium. Sometimes dealers will buy the new fashionable car at a stiff premium at a dealer auction to get more traffic into their place. Otherwise, the public pays it all… and it’s really not much of one in most cases. Most vehicles sell somewhere between a 1% to 10% premium in the retail markets. But even then the dealers often have to factor out the pigs that simply sit, and it’s not always cut and dry. The popular brands offer a few lackluster models and sometimes an errant option package or two. The declining ones offer the most porkish of pointless plentitude and have a net negative return in the end. In a recessionary market almost everyone has headaches and migraines. But the general public with finance companies in tow offer all the medicine needed to treat it."
• The Tasters "Weren't Entirely Happy." - "From a logical point of view, it's impossible to understand why food nerds have such a hard time believing that Wal-Mart could bring excellent food to the masses. The Wal-Mart model can and does work for a wide spectrum of goods. Organic mixed greens are not so very different from sweaters or shotguns or Popsicles or toilet paper as far as Wal-mart is concerned. But food scold Michael Pollan (among others) has so demonized the company that an article in The Atlantic noting that Wal-Mart sells rather nice veg reads like a revelation.
  . . .
  The taste testers preferred the Wal-Mart veggies overwhelmingly, with complaints about the meat and dairy."
• Is glycemic index irrelevant? - "There are several fundamental flaws with the notion that low-glycemic index foods are good for you:
  . . .
  2) Foods like whole wheat pasta have a low glycemic index because the blood sugar effect over the usual 90 minutes is increased to a lesser degree. The problem is that it remains increased for an extended period of up to several hours. In other words, the blood sugar-increasing effect of pasta, even whole grain, is long and sustained.
  . . .
  Don’t be falsely reassured by foods because they are billed as 'low-glycemic index.' View low-glycemic index foods as indulgences, something you might have once in a while, since a slice of whole grain bread is really not that different from a icing-covered cupcake."
• What's the Easiest Way to Share Large Files and Media with Friends? - "For this writer and tech enthusiast's money, the easiest and best way to share large files of any kind with your friends and family is to simply install Opera Unite, walk through a couple of quick configuration screens, and then send them the URL and password to access your content from any browser."
• The Night They Burned Ranum's Papers - "At about 2:30 a.m. on May 22, 1968, as New York City police entered Hamilton Hall, on Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, to clear it of demonstrators, files belonging to Orest A. Ranum, an associate professor of history, were ransacked, and papers documenting more than 10 years of research were burned. The fire came at the tail end of a month of protests that had roiled Columbia, paralyzing the university and provoking the biggest police bust ever undertaken on an American campus. Members of Students for a Democratic Society, which led the protests, denied responsibility for the arson, claiming that if anyone had set fire to Ranum's papers, it was the police.
  
  Now a key participant in the Columbia rebellion has made a startling confession. Mark Rudd, who was chairman of the SDS chapter during the disturbances, acknowledges that a fellow radical, John "J.J." Jacobs, set the fire in Hamilton Hall, and that he, Rudd, went along with the plan. The confession, a depressing postscript to the 1960s, solves a four-decade-long mystery. It offers a grim testament to just how mean things got at Columbia, and a sobering reminder that not all student radicals were starry-eyed idealists. In more than a couple of cases, they were power-hungry extremists jostling for control of the student-protest movement. And Ranum had the audacity to get in their way."
• Skype Over 3G Now Ringing on Verizon Wireless - "AT&T might be hesitant to allow Skype calls over 3G on the iPhone, but Verizon Wireless is making a statement about its network -- today, the carrier announced Skype voice support over 3G on various handsets. The BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630 smartphones are all supported starting next month. Even the recently popular Android phones like the Droid, Droid Eris and newly announced Devour will gain mobile Skype capabilities on Verizon’s EVDO network."

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

February 18, 2010 07:57 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

The President's Budget, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

The President's Budget

This course, held each year in mid-February, focuses on the President's next fiscal year budget proposal released in early February. Instructors discuss the policy initiatives of the President and how Congress will respond to them.

Attendees participate in a comprehensive overview and analysis of the President's most current budget, Congressional response, and appropriations and authorizations process reviews.

February 23, 2010, 8:30 am - 4:15 pm

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: Washington, DC

This is an elective course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see PresidentsBudget.com

February 17, 2010 07:37 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Congressional Authorizations and Appropriations, new book from TheCapitol.Net

Congressional Authorizations and Appropriations

Congressional Authorizations and Appropriations
How Congress Exercises the Power of the Purse through Authorizing Legislation, Appropriations Measures, Supplemental Appropriations, Earmarks, and Enforcing the Authorization-Appropriations Process

Compiled by TheCapitol.Net
Authors: Bill Heniff Jr, Sandy Streeter, Thomas L. Hungerford, Robert Keith, Megan Suzanne Lynch

A primary avenue for exercising Congress's power of the purse is the authorization and appropriation of federal spending to carry out government activities. While the power over appropriations is granted to Congress by the U.S. Constitution, the authorization appropriation process is derived from House and Senate rules. The formal process consists of two sequential steps: (1) enactment of an authorization measure that may create or continue an agency or program as well as authorize the subsequent enactment of appropriations; and (2) enactment of appropriations to provide funds for the authorized agency or program.

2010, 146 pages
ISBN: 1587331829 ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-182-4
Softcover book: $19.95

For more information, see 1824aa.com

February 16, 2010 03:07 PM   Link    Publications    Comments (0)

Congressional Pay and Perks: Salaries, Pension and Retirement, Franking, Travel, and Other Benefits for U.S. Senators and Representatives

Congressional Pay and Perks

Congressional Pay and Perks
Salaries, Pension and Retirement, Franking, Travel, and Other Benefits for U.S. Senators and Representatives

Compiled by TheCapitol.Net
Authors: Ida A. Brudnick, R. Eric Petersen, Patrick J. Purcell, Mildred Amer, Matthew Eric Glassman, Jennifer E. Manning, Michael L. Koempel and Judy Schneider

Congress is required by Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution to determine its own pay. Prior to 1969, Congress did so by enacting stand-alone legislation. From 1789 through 1968, Congress raised its pay 22 times using this procedure. Members were initially paid per diem. The first annual salaries, in 1815, were $1,500. Per diem pay was reinstituted in 1817. Congress returned to annual salaries, at a rate of $3,000, in 1855. By 1968, pay had risen to $30,000. Stand-alone legislation may still be used to raise Member pay, as it was most recently in 1982, 1983, 1989, and 1991; but two other methods--including an automatic annual adjustment procedure and a commission process--are now also available.

2010, 294 pages
ISBN: 1587331659 ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-165-7
Softcover book: $19.95

For more information, see CongressPay.com

February 16, 2010 12:37 PM   Link    Publications    Comments (0)

February 2010 Legislative, Communication, and Media Training from TheCapitol.Net

February 2010 Legislative, Communication, and Media Training from TheCapitol.Net

Our latest email update:
http://www.thecapitol.net/PublicPrograms/email2010/email_2010_February16.html

If you don't have time to attend our live training, see our Capitol Learning Audio Courses.

TheCapitol.Net, Inc.
>> We help you understand Washington and Congress TM
>> Non-partisan training and publications that show how Washington works. TM

February 16, 2010 10:27 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Lawyers and Law Grads: Is a Career With the Federal Government in Your Future? How to Get a Law Job With The Federal Government

Lawyers and Law Grads: Is a Career With the Federal Government in Your Future? How to Get a Law Job With The Federal Government

• Why look at the Federal Government for a legal job
• Benefits versus detriments of working for the Federal Government
• All Federal agencies have lawyer/legal jobs where a law degree is either required or highly desirable
• Each agency does its own recruiting and hiring
• "Honors" programs
• When and when not to use elected officials as references
• Be prepared for a frustrating process that requires persistence
• USAJOBS.gov

Recorded 2010
ISBN 10: 1-58733-203-5 Total run time: 50 minutes 2036
The online download of this program is FREE
This Audio Course is sold and distributed with a Limited License.

Thinking about going to law school? Before you borrow any money, see:

• Temporary Attorney: The Sweatshop Edition
• Big Debt, Small Law
• Third Tier Reality
• Exposing The Law School Scam
• But I Did Everything Right!
• JD Underdog
• "The Death of Big Law," working paper by Prof. Larry E. Ribstein, University of Illinois

If you don’t have the time to personally attend one of our live courses in Washington, DC, we offer convenient audio courses showing you how Washington works. ^TM

For more information and titles, see CapitolLearning.com

February 15, 2010 11:37 AM   Link    Career    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/15/10

Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution and Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide




Apparently This Is What Economics Does To People…

• Strategies for Working with Congress: Effective Communication and Advocacy on Capitol Hill, February 18, 2010
• The President's Budget, February 23, 2010
• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• Sidewalk Accountability and Parking Property Rights - "Through the Mid-Atlantic, rules regarding sidewalk shoveling vary from the mere expectation of courtesy to fines up to $100 for homeowners and business owners who do not do the right thing. While these municipal rules vary in how well they encourage citizens to maintain sidewalks, this issue might be better dealt with at a neighborhood rather than a city level.
  . . .
  In another snow-related economic conundrum, vehicle owners struggle to protect their rights to parking spaces that they have laboriously shoveled. In Boston, drivers can legally save their cleaned spots with lawn chairs or cones, but no such official rule exists in DC. However, an unscientific Washington Post poll found that 76% of respondents favored the right to reserve parking spots, effectively suggesting that the effort of shoveling is worth a guarantee of property rights."
• How many people die from lack of health insurance? - "I agree with her conclusion:
  
  'Intuitively, I feel as if there should be some effect. But if the results are this messy, I would guess that the effect is not very big.'"
• How Insurers Reject You: BlueCross BlueShield of Texas' blueprint for denying health policies. - "The people who most urgently need Congress to pass health care reform belong to a different group. They're the 9 percent of Americans who purchase health care for themselves or their families in the so-called 'nongroup market,' which is where most of the horror stories you've heard about health insurance tend to occur. On second thought, that's not quite right. The people who most urgently need health reform are those who aspire to join the 9 percent, but can't, either because no nongroup insurer will take them or because any nongroup insurer that will take them has priced its policy sky-high to offset some medical risk or another. Neither wealthy enough to pay for nongroup insurance nor poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, these spurned customers end up among the 15 percent of Americans who receive no health insurance at all. Should you lose your job and fail to find another, expect to purchase nongroup insurance or, worse, not purchase it. Together, these two groups represent one-quarter of the population."
• Bipolar or TDD? Asperger’s or autism spectrum? - "Asperger’s Syndrome and autism could become “autism spectrum disorders,” a change opposed by many Asperger’s advocates."
• TARP Panel: Small Banks Are Facing Loan Woes - "Nearly 3,000 small U.S. banks could be forced to dramatically curtail their lending because of losses on commercial real-estate loans, a congressional inquiry concluded.
  
  The findings, set to be released Thursday by the Congressional Oversight Panel as part of its scrutiny of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, point to yet another obstacle for the slow-moving economic recovery. The small banks being threatened by loans they made for shopping centers, offices, hotels and apartments represent a major cog in the U.S. credit system, especially to entrepreneurs."
• Unofficial Problem Bank List at 605 - "This is an unofficial list of Problem Banks compiled only from public sources."
• Why the House Democrats are about 100 votes short - "So you, as a Democratic member with potentially serious opposition, do the political caucus. If you vote for the Senate bill, you’re voting for something that has 35% support nationwide and probably a little less than that in your district. You will have voted for the Cornhusker Hustle and the Louisiana Purchase. Your Republican opponent will ask why you voted for something that gave taxpayers in Nebraska and Louisiana better treatment than the people you represent (there are no Democratic House members running for reelection in those two states: Nebraska has only Republican House members and the single Louisiana House Democrat is running for the Senate). The only protection you have against this is the assurance that the Senate parliamentarian and scared incumbent senators will come through for you, and that Harry Reid will pursue a steady course.
  
  So your response to the leadership is either, I gotta think about this, or, Hell no. The House Democratic leadership’s problem is that it cannot credibly promise that the Senate will keep its part of the bargain."
• Virginia: Pretty Darn Satisfied - "As it happens, Gallup has just produced a 'well-being' ranking for the 50 U.S. states (though using a different methodology). What I find interesting is that most Americans are satisfied with the quality of life that their state offers. There is some variation between states, but that variation falls within a relatively narrow range of 82.3% (North Dakota) and 69.0% (Nevada) in terms of percent satisfied.
  
  Virginia falls within the 'high' range of satisfaction and, indeed, is the only state east of the Mississippi River to do so. We are an outlier -- most states with high well being are clustered among the northwestern plains and mountain states. The least satisfied, not surprisingly, are characterized by high unemployment and/or high poverty. Yet Gallup notes that the correlation between economic outlook and satisfaction is far from perfect. Remarkably, even as the recession deepened last year, satisfaction levels improved modestly across much of the country."
• The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden - "But as tuitions rise, many people are borrowing heavily to pay their bills. Some no doubt view it as "good debt," because an education can lead to a higher salary. But in practice, student loans are one of the most toxic debts, requiring extreme consumer caution and, as Dr. Bisutti learned, responsibility.
  
  Unlike other kinds of debt, student loans can be particularly hard to wriggle out of. Homeowners who can't make their mortgage payments can hand over the keys to their house to their lender. Credit-card and even gambling debts can be discharged in bankruptcy. But ditching a student loan is virtually impossible, especially once a collection agency gets involved. Although lenders may trim payments, getting fees or principals waived seldom happens.
  
  Yet many former students are trying. There is an estimated $730 billion in outstanding federal and private student-loan debt, says Mark Kantrowitz of FinAid.org, a Web site that tracks financial-aid issues--and only 40% of that debt is actively being repaid. The rest is in default, or in deferment, which means that payments and interest are halted, or in 'forbearance,' which means payments are halted while interest accrues."
• Just How Ugly Is The Sovereign Default Truth? How Self Delusions Prevent Recognition Of Reality - "Today we finally saw a crack in the 30 Year Auction. And as the crack belongs to an ever more brittle wall holding back trillions in debt just begging to be revalued to fair value, and to an unmanipulated supply and demand curve, more and more fissures in the smooth and fake facade of sovereign debt will soon appear, only this time not somewhere out of sight and out of mind like Greece, but in our own back yard. At that point the financial oligarchy will very much wish the Methadone had been administered sooner (roughly about March 2009, when we first suggested it). It will however be far too late, and the decades of self delusion will finally end."
• Schwarzman Says Kowtow to Banks or They Will Strangle the Economy - "Can someone shut these banking industry narcissists up?
  . . .
  The last thing the public should do now is turn down the heat on bankers. We have just been through the greatest looting of the public purse in history. We cannot relent until we understand how it happened and have put new rules in place to prevent its recurrence."
• How Long Is Long Term? - "It may be heretical, therefore, to note that in an investment sense, 10 years is not an eternity. Yes, as an alternative to the all-too-common focus on one-year returns or other short stretches, a 10-year measure provides welcome perspective. It's apt to cover more than one market cycle and a variety of macroeconomic environments. We here at Morningstar often cite that period for such reasons. But for an individual investor, there are benefits to thinking far beyond a mere decade. How about 30 or 40 years?"
• President Palin? - "Sarah Palin can be a dazzling performer. But she’s still capable of saying that Obama could improve his chances for reelection if he 'played the war card … decided to declare war on Iran.' Her articulation of political ideas remains remarkably thin. The Republican bench may be weak, but I don’t think it’s that weak."
• Scrappers: the financial crisis up close and personal - "Scrappers is an unusual, interesting and engaging film you won't see down at the multiplex.
  . . .
  The film combines affecting portraits of the lives of the two scrappers, an interesting look at how global finance affects ordinary people, and an examination of the role and function of micro-markets and how regulation gets in their way. The movie is also a detailed picture of the south side of Chicago, and has a wonderful original score by Chicago musician Frank Rosaly."
• Intelligent, Respectable Women Across Globe Inexplicably Excited For Figure Skating - "As the 2010 Winter Olympics get underway, the prospect of watching figure skating and ice dancing in all their forms has inspired a surprising amount of giddy exuberance in otherwise levelheaded women worldwide."

What is the Hexayurt?

• Social Cons and the Lure of the Seduction Community - "We are overhearing a breathless conversation between tongue-clucking older women and disaffected young men. It is an orgy of confirmation bias, more vulgar--but perhaps more entertaining--than anything Allen can tell us about the depredations of modern dating."
• You Are More Likely To Read This Story Because Its Headline Contains No Punctuation - "Avoiding personal responsibility used to be clean and simple. Caught red-handed? The devil made you do it. End of story.
  
  But today we have a dizzying array of bogus blaming options. We can choose from rap music, movies, TV, video games, the Internet, Twinkies, genes, society, the neighbor’s kid, our upbringing, the booze talking, atheism, evolution, the definition of 'is,' planets, stars, lunar phases, the ever-vague and passive 'mistakes were made,' the economy, being an only child, not being an only child, and more. Just keeping track can exhaust the most adept excuse-maker. Call me extreme, but some days I wonder if it might be easier simply to say, 'I made a mistake.'
  
  I saved the excuse that accuses my profession for last: 'The advertising made me do it.' If you fed your kids fast food until your spouse mistook them for the minivan, blew the budget on a video game system, or bought trendy clothes you didn’t need and that went out of style as you were paying for them, take heart. You can blame us slick advertising people and our so-called hypnotic work.
  
  Just one problem. No advertisement has the power to make you act against your will.
  . . .
  This is not to say that all advertising is ineffective (though much of it is). The right ads can boost a product’s sales. Conversely, the wrong ads can drive them down. Taco Bell’s experience with its spokes-Chihuahua illustrates both. Prior to introducing the pooch, the chain had enjoyed steady sales. When the Chihuahua came on the scene, his popularity soared, but sales plummeted. When Taco Bell switched to dogless commercials with close-ups of savory ingredients, sales rebounded. (Ironically, by ad industry standards the Chihuahua campaign was 'highly creative,' whereas its successful replacement was woefully lackluster.)
  . . .
  Ads that deceive also deserve mention. To find examples of legal but deceptive advertising practices, you have only to search through ads for alternative medicine, political candidates, diet plans, hearing aids, stock market predictors, multi-level companies, or subliminal self-improvement CDs, to name a few. Many such ads toe the legal line by placing qualifying language in small type that occupies five percent of the ad space, and using the remaining 95 percent to mislead. A five percent weasel does not unmake a lie."
• [Denied Tenure,] Professor Said to Be Charged After 3 Are Killed in Alabama - "Three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville were shot to death, and three other people were seriously wounded at a biology faculty meeting on Friday afternoon, university officials said.
  
  The Associated Press reported that a biology professor, identified as Amy Bishop, was charged with murder.
  
  According to a faculty member, the professor had applied for tenure, been turned down, and appealed the decision. She learned on Friday that she had been denied once again.
  . . .
  Officials said the dead were all biology professors, G. K. Podila, the department’s chairman; Maria Ragland Davis; and Adriel D. Johnson Sr. Two other biology professors, Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera and Joseph G. Leahy, as well as a professor’s assistant, Stephanie Monticciolo, are at Huntsville Hospital in conditions ranging from stable to critical." There will be a few openings now.
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• How do bar owners get you to drink more? - "They turn the music up:"
• Google Brings the Power of the Pie Chart - "Google's latest release, the Google Chart Tools, will make it easier for sites to show their users data in a meaningful, visual and interactive manner.
  
  These tools are broken down into two parts: image charts and interactive charts. The image charts work off a simple URL structure, defining all of the necessary characteristics through URL parameters. The interactive charts, while still relatively simple compared to custom creation, use a slightly more complicated Javascript library."
• Beautiful Gold, So-So Silver & Shameful Bronze - "But on the bright side, at least we get curling back on American television. Where it belongs."
• Why? - "The complete article discusses these frustrations and the work by DC politicians and bureaucrats to correct the problems, but nowhere does the author ask the simple question, 'Why are DC residents required to obtain a license to lease their property to begin with?'
  . . .
  And I'd be willing to bet a week's salary that there was actually nothing wrong with either the outlets or the smoke detector. As two cops have told me, they can pull over any car and find something that violates some law or code. So much for the rule of law."
• What you should look for in a marriage partner: - "Marriage isn't all fun and games. In the past I've posted about marriage making you poorer, killing sex drive, and making you fat. So if you're gonna do it, do it right. But how do you know who to marry? Should you just trust your feelings or pick the person who 'looks good on paper'? Luckily, science has answers for us:
  . . .
  1) Find someone who you idealize and who idealizes you.
  . . .
  3) Guys, you want to avoid that whole 'involuntarily celibate' situation that men fear after years of marriage? Don't marry a woman who is sexually submissive:
  . . .
  6) What about attractiveness and happiness? Everybody is happier when the wife is better looking than the husband is."
• The Death of Big Law - "Large law firms face unprecedented stress. Many have dissolved, gone bankrupt or significantly downsized in recent years. This paper provides an economic analysis of the forces driving the downsizing of Big Law. It shows that this downsizing reflects a basically precarious business model rather than just a shrinking economy. Because large law firms do not own durable, firm-specific property, a set of strict conditions must exist to bind the firm together. Several pressures have pushed the unraveling of these conditions, including increased global competition and the rise of in-house counsel. The large law firm’s business model therefore requires fundamental restructuring. Combining insights from the theory of the firm, intellectual property, and the economics of legal services, this paper discusses new models that might replace Big Law, how these new models might push through regulatory barriers, and the broader implications of Big Law’s demise for legal education, the creation of law and lawyers’ role in society."

Domino's Turns A Loss In A Lawsuit It Wasn't Involved In Into A TV Commercial




The End, Perhaps, of Hitler Parodies

• Top 10 Google Settings You Should Know About - "As the outcry over Google Buzz's privacy has shown us, it's smart to explore settings in Gmail, along with other places you're sharing data with the search giant. Let's take a look at 10 privacy, convenience, and annoyance fixers you should know."
• Free Speech on Campus: Michael Oren at UC Irvine - "Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States recently gave a speech -- or at least tried to give a speech -- at UC Irvine at the invitation of UCI’s law school and political science department. A group of students at UC Irvine, apparently all members of the Muslim Students Union , decided to try to stop the speech.
  
  The students came up with the following plan. They had been told that if they interrupted the speech, they would be arrested for disturbing a public event, so the students went sequentially, each interrupting the Ambassador once. Each student would stand up in the middle of the speech and start screaming out condemnation, which would trigger the wild applause of many other students in the audience. The student would then walk to the aisle to be arrested and escorted out by campus police. Once the Ambassador started again, the next student would go, resulting in a total of 10 interruptions to the speech and arrests of 11 students, 8 from UC Irvine and 3 from UC Riverside. The video is here:"
• Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time - "4. Jeff Dunham - Achmed the Dead Terrorist; 104,013,553 views"
• Cyber warfare: don't inflate it, don't underestimate it - "Near-term hotspots and the most vulnerable target
  
  MS: Broadly, what do you see happening within cyber warfare over the next few years?
  
  JC: Africa has a huge population of infected computers. I read one estimate a few months ago that they have about 100 million PCs scattered throughout the continent and maybe 80 percent of those are infected. Once broadband hits Africa, then you've got this huge opportunity for botnets to spring up. These mega botnets could conceivably dwarf Conficker or some of these other huge botnets.
  
  East Africa is another spot to watch. In Somalia, where piracy is lucrative and the area is so lawless, it's such a chaotic environment. There's a growth of religious extremists there as well. So you've got criminals with a huge pile of cash, these pirates, and then you have these radical extremists looking for ways to create havoc. Should their interests coincide, I would fear for very destructive Internet attacks.
  
  MS: Last question: Out of all this, what's the thing that keeps you up at night?
  
  JC: The most worrisome thing to me is the vulnerability of the power grid. I just released a report on this -- it's Project Grey Goose's Report on Critical Infrastructure -- where I and my team of researchers document the problem. The Department of Defense has identified 34 critical assets to conducting its mission. Thirty-one out of the 34 are dependent on the public power grid.
  
  I know in my state of Washington, they tell us that if there's an earthquake or some other natural disaster, you can expect no help for at least seven days. There will be no police response, no 911 response, no National Guard for at least seven days because they'll all be busy protecting critical infrastructures. And so that's what I worry about. The grid is so vulnerable. It would cause a lot of chaos here if somebody were to actually attack it."
• Critical Security Update for Adobe Flash Player - "Adobe Systems Inc. today (Feb. 11, 2010) released an updated version of its Flash Player software to fix two critical security holes in the ubiquitous Web browser plugin. Adobe also issued a security update for its Air software, a central component of several widely-used Web applications, such as Tweetdeck.
  
  The Flash update brings the newest, patched version of Flash to v. 10.0.45.2, and applies to all supported platforms, including Windows, Mac and Linux installations. Visit this link to find out what version of Flash you have. The latest update is available from this link."
• Less Lamp – The Only Lamp That You’re Actually Supposed To Break - "When you unbox the Less Lamp, you’ll find that it’s the absolute worst excuse for a lighting fixture, as it’s basically just a solid black egg. The idea is that you’ll use the included pick to poke holes in it. Heck, you can even break off the bottom portion of the egg to let out more light. As you can imagine, nothing this artsy-sounding ever comes cheap. This particular lamp will set you back $800. That’s right, eight hundred smackeroos for a lamp that you’re going to break immediately."

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February 15, 2010 07:57 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 20 (Twentieth Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 20 (20th Amendment)

Amendment XX.

Passed by Congress March 2, 1932. Ratified January 23, 1933.

Note: Article I, section 4, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of this amendment. In addition, a portion of the 12th amendment was superseded by section 3.

Section 1.
The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

Section 2.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Section 3.
If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

Section 4.
The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Section 5.
Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

Section 6.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

More

• Twentieth Amendment - Wikipedia
• Twentieth Amendment - Findlaw

Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States (POTUS) on January 20, 2009

Prior to his inauguration, FDR was almost killed by an assassin. Had he been killed, presumably vice president-elect John Nance Garner would have assumed the presidency.

A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 14, 2010 10:17 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 19 (Nineteenth Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 19 (19th Amendment)

Amendment XIX.

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919. Ratified August 18, 1920.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

More

• Nineteenth Amendment - Wikipedia
• Nineteenth Amendment - Findlaw

The Suffragists and the Suffragettes

The female vote

A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 13, 2010 09:57 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

The Defense Budget, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net, Feb. 26, 2010

The Defense Budget

Held each year in late-February, this course concentrates on the President's new fiscal year defense budget proposal and how Congress responds to it. Experienced faculty members explore and study key documents, charts and graphs, budget allocations and projections provided in this budget.

The defense budget request is carefully analyzed, focusing on winners and losers, DoD's budget authority by title, weapons systems, budget by service, military transformation and Congress' response.

February 26, 2010, 8:30 am - 4:15 pm

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 (Gallery Place / Chinatown Metro stop)

This is an elective course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see TheDefenseBudget.com

February 12, 2010 08:47 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/12/10

Steve Meyers: Global Debt Crisis and 2010 Forecast Update

• Strategies for Working with Congress: Effective Communication and Advocacy on Capitol Hill, February 18, 2010
• The President's Budget, February 23, 2010
• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• Tyler Cowen on "Haiti: An Outsider's Perspective" - "Come out to the GMU Economics Society lecture with Tyler Cowen on Haiti: An Outsider's Perspective" -- Tuesday, February 16th at 5:30pm in Enterprise 80." GMU Enterprise Center: 4031 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030. From the Fairfax Campus: Turn right onto University Drive. Follow University Drive through 1 traffic signal (Fairfax City Hall on left at signal) and past a Fire Station. Make a right onto South Street and then an immediate left into the parking lot. The entrance of the building faces South Street. The Mason Enterprise Center is located on the 2nd Floor.
• Super Bowl Commercials - Best part of the game
• The Life of a "Puppy Bowl" Referee - "As a teenager, Andrew Schechter played lead roles in theater productions of 'Zorba the Greek' and 'A Midsummer's Night Dream.' He thought he'd stay in the theater, but after interning for an entertainment company in Los Angeles in 2005, he became interested in the other side of the stage--producing. Today he works as an associate producer for Animal Planet, a cable television network, helping arrange shoots for various animal-driven shows, such as Dogs 101 and Cats 101. On Feb. 7 he'll put on his acting hat for the third year for one of Animal Planet's most popular shows, working as the referee for 'Puppy Bowl,' two hours of alternative programming before the Super Bowl and featuring 43 playing puppies. He gets a break for kitten halftime."
• Law Professors Aren't Lazy, Law Schools Are Ineffective - "Ms. Furi-Perry does, however, scratch around the periphery of the real and much more serious problem with legal education. It is based on a 'Langdellian' model that has been embraced by the universities that house the law schools. Build a box, get a few academically inclined individuals with law degrees to teach students about the law, and rake in large amounts of tuition with low overhead. No need for the expensive plumbing, equipment, and facilities that must be provided or paid for in conjunction with other graduate programs such as those in the medical arts and sciences.
  
  There is also no need in this model to teach students how to actually function in practice as lawyers, as the model only requires them to study the law and then gives them a certificate acknowledging that they have successfully completed that task.
  
  The success of [being a professor] is measured in very large part by the pound, in terms of the pages and words churned out in law reviews and books that are a 'must publish' each year, not the quality of the student from an employability perspective.
  
  This is in sharp contrast to the medical professions which actually train their students to practice. Law schools and those that are familiar with them have come to this realization and the current trend is now toward 'practice ready' graduates and 'outcome based' assessments. This will require universities to put some money back into the cash cows they call law schools, as it requires resources to be added to the development of oral and written skills courses and practice clinics that are made a part of the academic curriculum. Many law schools are already beginning to make strides in that regard and I suspect more and more will in the future."
• The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind' - "A year ago, I wrote a column called 'Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go,' advising students that grad school is a bad idea unless they have no need to earn a living for themselves or anyone else, they are rich or connected (or partnered with someone who is), or they are earning a credential for a job they already hold.
  
  In a March 2009 follow-up essay, I removed the category of people who are fortunately partnered because, as many readers wrote in to tell me, graduate school and the 'two-body problem' often breaks up many seemingly stable relationships. You can't assume any partnership will withstand the strains of entry into the academic life.
  
  Those columns won renewed attention last month from multiple Web sites, and have since attracted a lot of mail and online commentary. The responses tended to split into two categories: One said that I was overemphasizing the pragmatic aspects of graduate school at the expense of the 'life of the mind' for its own sake. The other set of responses, and by far the more numerous, were from graduate students and adjuncts asking why no one had told them that their job prospects were so poor and wondering what they should do now.
  
  I detected more than a little sanctimony and denial in most of the comments from the first group and a great deal of pain and disillusionment in the latter. The former seem used to being applauded by authorities; the latter seem to expect to be slapped down for raising questions. That's why they write to me, I believe. They want confirmation that something is wrong with higher education, that they have been lied to, systematically."
• Controversial National Labor Relations Board nominee Craig Becker shot down in Senate - "By a vote of 52 to 33, the Obama administration nominee to the National Labor Relations Board, Craig Becker, just failed to get the 60 votes needed for his nomination to proceed in the Senate.
  
  Yesterday, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., came out against Becker's nomination. Senate Republicans and grassroots conservatives had been opposing Becker's nomination from the get-go. As a law professor, Becker had written a law review article about how the NLRB could be used to remake labor regulations in favor of unions without congressional approval. More recently, Becker had acted as counsel for the SEIU and AFL-CIO."
• Food Stamps – The Great Recession’s Soup Lines - "A record 38.2 million Americans were enrolled in the food stamp program at latest count, up 246,000 from the previous month and the latest in record-high monthly tallies that began in December 2008."
• The California Financial Gambler’s Fallacy – 5 Reasons Why the Budget and the Economy will Keep Home Prices Stagnant. Banks Paying Property Taxes on Shadow Inventory. - "Buying a home today is a big gamble but that didn’t seem to stop many California buyers from getting in over their heads before and I’m sure it won’t stop many from doing it again. Banks and realtors are more than happy to indulge in your speculation."
• Gary Shilling: Higher Government Pay Will "Likely Lead to a Tax Revolt" - "14.8 million Americans are currently out of work and looking for a job, according to a report released today by the Bureaus of Labor Statistics. Even if you do have a job, wages have not increased substantially over the last ten years, with one exception: government workers.
  
  Thanks to generous health-care benefits and pensions, it pays - more than ever - to work in the public sector. Economist Gary Shilling fears dubious consequences if state and local workers continue to make more money and at the same time governments raise taxes and cut services."
• States Face Big Costs to Dig Out From Blizzard - "State and local governments along the East Coast digging out from a historic blizzard are now trying to figure out how to pay the bills.
  
  Some mid-Atlantic cities were clobbered with as much as 40 inches of snow in the past few days, following storms earlier in the season, and more snow was forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday. The Virginia Department of Transportation estimated it would remove 500,000 tons of snow in northern Virginia--equivalent to about 17,000 miles of road--from just the latest downfall. "
• Reports from the Front Lines of “Snowmageddon” - "In fairness, a jurisdiction that gets massive snowstorms as rarely as DC can’t be as well-prepared for them as a northern city. If it was, that would be a sign that DC authorities have invested too many resources in snowstorm preparation. That said, things are a lot better where I am in northern Virginia. Until the second round of snow began tonight, the main roads were completely cleaned, and I was able to drive out to buy last minute supplies in Arlington and Falls Church with minimum trouble. Our own street (a small side street) was only just barely driveable, but still could be used. Much of the difference between DC and Virginia is probably attributable to DC’s famously incompetent municipal government. I’m very glad that I 'voted with my feet' against them when I first moved to the region."
• Looking for a Leg Up in a Bad Economy - "Many students are choosing trade or training schools over traditional colleges or universities because of the quick turn around from enrollment to graduation (as early as nine months) and the prospect of 'recession proof' careers.
  . . .
  'It cost entirely too much money nowadays to got to four-year colleges,' Mr. Canty said. 'I think a training school is better because you’re not paying for a name, you’re paying for the actual education.'
  
  At a four-year college, he said, 'I think you’re actually paying for the windows and the big school and the size of the classroom.'"
• Order! I Said Order! - "Far be it from finem respice to suggest that a bit of successful impromptu sport with House republicans (not exactly the most dangerous game roaming the great Congressional plains of the Serengeti, after all) on their quasi-vacation might have created a bit of executive overconfidence. In this light, it might also be unkind to suggest that this whole 'question time' thing is highly unlikely to end well for this (or future) executives in the United States. Or that, on top of everything else, the idea as a whole is a quite dangerous and volatile experiment for American politics when taken to its natural conclusion- even if one ignores the patently obvious separation of powers issues it raises.
  . . .
  Several key components to understanding why Prime Minister's Question time works in the United Kingdom (and would likely be a disaster in the United States) require a certain cultural understanding of America's special friends across the pond. A certain naïveté in this area is probably why so many Americans seem so in love with the idea.
  . . .
  What, for example, is one to make of the fact that, in the United States, simply delivering campaign rhetoric, even from the safe remove of broadcast video, that might contain invective even half as caustic as that encountered on a weekly basis during Prime Minister's Question time entails the anguished advice and debate of about $250,000 in political consultant hours on the wisdom of 'going negative?'
  
  It is telling that the State of the Union permits no greater feedback to the First Presenter than cheering and no greater expression of disdain than polite golf-clapping. In this light it is not particularly surprising that Supreme Court Justices are expected to display, for the duration, a narcotic vacancy so complete (even when, as recently, they are directly accosted by the speaker) that even the most modest reaction is cause for scandal. So extensive is the horror evoked by the possibility that the judiciary may be seen to affront the will of the executive through interaction it is no wonder that several Justices simply refuse to attend the proceedings any longer.
  . . .
  When an institution like the executive branch can be seen to doggedly employ arguments asserting separation of powers to avoid even submitting videotaped answers in response to Congressional queries pursuant to a potentially criminal investigation on the grounds that it might damage the privilege of future executives, well, it is hard to imagine weekly, direct questioning and cross examination of even a law professor-grandmaster debate champion by what amounts to a pack of mostly current or former lawyers lasting very long.
  
  Also easily forgotten is the fact that real debate of the non-contrived variety is exceedingly time consuming and labor intensive. Margaret Thatcher regularly spent eight to ten hours preparing for fifteen minutes of weekly Prime Minister's Question time. It is, quite frankly, hard to credit that sort of weekly commitment from the executive branch in the United States, that is, before endless complaints referring to the need to 'get back to the business of governing' begin to issue forth, first from the likes of Robert Gibbs just in front of progressively higher elements of the administration and finally the executive himself."
• A Cult of Oddballs and Misfits? - "For instance, in October 2009, a Gallup poll reported that 44 percent of Americans favor making marijuana legal. The consensus amongst elite policymakers may not match public opinion yet, but it hardly strikes me as a fringe idea."
• Thomas Friedman proposes a new rate of marginal transformation - "By the way, how would we feel if each al Qaeda attack came with 50 new madrassas?
  . . .
  Is the problem lack of school buildings? Is there a recipe for building a modern state and capitalist polity in Yemen? I'm all ears."
• The Galbraith Revival: The aristocratic economist’s big-government ideas are back in vogue. - "There remains, however, an astonishingly gaping absence in Galbraith’s worldview. While he is perfectly able to see the defects of businessmen--their inclination to megalomania, greed, hypocrisy, and special pleading--he is quite unable to see the same traits in government bureaucrats. It is as if he has read, and taken to heart, the work of Sinclair Lewis, but never even skimmed the work of Kafka.
  . . .
  In his 1981 autobiography, A Life in Our Times, he recalls the way academics flocked to Washington at the beginning of the New Deal. 'Word had . . . reached the university that a nearly unlimited number of jobs were open for economists at unbelievably high pay in the federal government,' he writes. 'All the new agencies needed this talent. Students who had been resisting for years the completion of theses and the resulting unemployment now finished them up in weeks. Some did not even stop to do that. So a new gold rush began.' One might think that this would have opened his eyes to the vested interests of bureaucracy--to the possibility that large government programs might operate more for the interest of the apparatchiks than for that of the alleged beneficiaries. But it never did.
  . . .
  There is, of course, a deep psychological tension in Galbraith. He always talks about the rich as though he were not one of them; but the impoverished rarely spend their winters at Gstaad, Switzerland, as he did. He accepts that enrichment can be licit, no doubt thinking primarily of his own; but his enrichment came about by advocating in best-selling books the governmental expropriation of the riches of others. This enabled him to maintain his image of himself as one of the moral elect, one of those generous souls among the rich whom he describes in The Good Society, patrons of the poor--who themselves 'are largely without political voice except as they are supported and represented by the considerable number in the more fortunate brackets who feel and express concern.'
  
  Here we reach the heart of the matter. Galbraith’s thinking about social and economic matters was always de haut en bas; his solutions emerged from the Olympian heights of his own ratiocination, to be applied to the clueless multitudes below.
  . . .
  Galbraith’s egotism and condescension toward most of the human race is evident in his admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt--or rather, in the grounds for that admiration. Here he is in the preface to Name-Dropping, a singularly uninformative book of reminiscences of the great whom he met: 'I turn now to Franklin Roosevelt, the first and in many ways the greatest of those I encountered over a lifetime. And the one, more than incidentally, who accorded me the most responsibility.' I think you would have to have a pretty tough carapace of self-regard not to recognize the absurdity of this, or to have the gall to commit it to print.
  
  At another point, Galbraith writes that Roosevelt saw the United States 'as a vast estate extended out from his family home at Hyde Park, New York. For this he had responsibility, and particularly for the citizens and workers thereon.' A tree-planting program that Roosevelt initiated in the Plains states, for instance, was 'the reaction of a great landlord, an obvious step to improve appearance and property values, a benign action for the tenantry.' Galbraith meant this as praise, which is not surprising, because his own attitude toward the country was similar. The people were sheep, and government, with Galbraith as advisor, was the shepherd.
  . . .
  The main function of what Galbraith writes is to minimize the horrors of Communism, upon which he has hardly a word. Indeed, strict political control never intrudes much on his consciousness when he is in the Communist world. 'I have generally avoided quoting by name my Polish . . . sources in this account,' he writes. 'This is not because I have any great fear of compromising them. Many people . . . take no small pride in speaking plainly and do so without evident restraint.'
  
  Other priceless observations follow. Noticing the drabness with which people are dressed, Galbraith remarks that it 'may be the problem of socialism. Planners can provide for everything but color, and they cannot allow for that because so much of it is associated with idiocy great and small. In any case, the people of Poland have more liberty than variety.' One of the great advantages of Galbraith-style planning is the elimination of 'idiocy great and small,' of the kind that people are apt to embrace when they have the choice. The solution: eliminate choice. You can have any color you like, so long as it’s chosen by the philosopher-king."

Attn, DC Reasonoids: Conquer Snowpacalypse 2 Tonight With Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson at Reason's DC HQ

• UC Berkeley has "Nobel Laureate Only" parking spaces - "When I was at UT Austin, a school which is famously car-unfriendly, it was rumored that one of the elder patriarchs of the College of Natural Sciences--a man who had multiple doctoral degrees and had been given countless awards for his work both as a scientific researcher and an educational administrator--had once quipped that the honor that was most valuable to him, on a daily basis, was the "O" parking permit that let him leave his car literally in the shadow of UT's iconic tower."
• Phase Change Material Could Cool Houses - "MIT's Technology Review reports on paraffin wax capsules could use the cold of evening to cool rooms in the day."
• The New Dating Game: Back to the New Paleolithic Age. - "The whole point of the sexual and feminist revolutions was to obliterate the sexual double standard that supposedly stood in the way of ultimate female freedom. The twin revolutions obliterated much more, but the double standard has reemerged in a harsher, crueler form: wreaking havoc on beta men and on beta women, too, who, as the declining marriage rate indicates, have trouble finding and securing long-term mates in a supply-saturated short-term sexual marketplace. Gorgeous alpha women fare fine--for a few years until the younger competition comes of age. But no woman, alpha or beta, seems able to escape the atavistic preference of men both alpha and beta for ladylike and virginal wives (the Darwinist explanation is that those traits are predictors of marital fidelity, assuring men that the offspring that their spouses bear are theirs, too). And every aspect of New Paleolithic mating culture discourages the sexual restraint once imposed on both sexes that constituted a firm foundation for both family life and civilization."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• When did Nigerian scammers take over the Home Depot? - "Mrs. Angus sends email to Home Depot asking if we can return it at a local store or if we have to mail it back. Next day, we get a response from their "customer care" department:
  . . .
  Now there are a lot of funny things here. 'Inconvenience'? 'further assistance'? cannot exchange 'the entire product'?"
• John Locke in Washington - "If you dig your car out from its frozen tomb, do you then own that parking spot until the sun melts open the rest of the curbside space?"
• Who’s Afraid Of Electric Power Steering? - "Here’s a challenge: try to find a review of the Toyota Corolla that doesn’t bemoan its numb steering. Now try with a Chevy Cobalt. Or a Venza, or Vibe, Or Rav4, or Equinox. What do these vehicles have in common? Column-mounted electric power steering systems from JTEKT, a Toyota spin-off supplier which has done a brisk business in these fun-eliminating steering systems. And though the motor press has been bashing electric power assist steering (EPAS or EPS) for its deleterious effect on handling, the explosive growth in these systems may put more at risk than mere enthusiast-approved steering feel.
  
  This anesthetization of steering systems has not taken place because manufacturers appreciate the proliferation of words like 'numb' and 'overboosted' in reviews of their products. EPS offers improved efficiency due to its reduction of parasitic losses, and is cheaper to manufacture than traditional hydraulic systems. This killer combination offers manufacturers a combination of improvements that have proven near-impossible to resist, resulting in the broad proliferation of EPS systems. And if reduced steering feel were the only casualty of the switch, it would be a tradeoff that any manufacturer would be willing to run.
  
  But as EPS has exploded onto the market, a number of troubling issues has plagued the system. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened investigations into the Chevy Cobalt and Toyota Corolla, which share the column-mounted JTEKT EPS system. Cobalt, which moved to an EPS system for the 2005 model year has been haunted by an accelerating number of failures since the switch, while the Corolla investigation centers on Corollas built since the 2009 model-year switch to EPS."
• Tyranny Unmasked - "A government, like an individual is embarrassed or ruined, by expenses beyond its income. It cannot export its patronage, its exclusive privileges, and its extravagance, to foreign nations, and bring back foreign cargoes of frugality and equal laws for home consumption.
  . . .
  It is, in fact by too much proficiency in the art of political spinning and weaving, and not by too little patronage of capitalists, that our prosperity has been lost.
  . . .
  The richest treasury in Europe was at that time united with the most miserable people, instead of being an indication of their happiness and prosperity. The Swiss Cantons are remarkable for the poverty of their treasuries, and the happiness of their people. The severity of their climate and sterility of their soil, are both compensated by the frugality of their governments; and two great natural evils are more than countervailed by one political blessing. If a poor country is made happy by this cardinal political virtue, what would be its effects in a rich one? The Committee are fond of comparisons. Let them compare the situation of Switzerland; a rugged country under a severe climate; with that of their neighbours the French and Italians, favoured with fine soils and genial latitudes. All writers unite in declaring that the happiness of the Swiss far exceeds theirs."

Google Fiber for Communities

• Have You Ever Seen a Lunar Rainbow? - "This is not a rainbow. It's a moonbow, an extremely rare atmospheric phenomenon caused by the near-full moon that it's extremely hard to catch. So hard, in fact, that you can only see its colors thanks to long-exposure photography."
• Don't Friend Me, Bro! I Quit! - "My name is Futurelawyer, and I was addicted to Facebook. Which is why I quit. Family, friends, friends of friends, people who wouldn't be my friends in any other version of reality, and spies who wanted to become my friend to check up on me for some nefarious purpose; I quit. I am no longer yours to toy with."
• A Novel Resin to Treat Early Cavities - "DMG America, a dental technology company out of Englewood, N.J., is selling a light cured infiltrant resin that is useful for treating early cavities. At the very early stage of tooth decay, before a formal, treatable cavity has developed, fluoride treatment is often used as prophylaxis. But after a certain level of tooth decay, fluoride will be of no use, yet drilling the tooth to treat the cavity is not merited either, since filling a cavity with this method destroys healthy tooth tissue, and it is uncertain whether the decay will continue to a point that requires treatment."
• Pants Pockets: Decorative or Functional? - "Alas, I've always believed that pockets were made for stuffin'. For example, my right-rear pocket is for my wallet. (I used to put a card-carrier in the left-rear one, but with great effort abandoned that practice and thinned down my plastic so that they fit in the wallet.) The left front pocket is for car keys and ChapStick, the right front for coins, and both might hold a Kleenex or two."
• Feature Not a Bug - "I find it pretty hilarious that folks on the left suddenly feel the US is ungovernable, largely because they have not been able to pass a couple of complicated and risky legislative initiatives. Was the US ungovernable when Bush couldn’t pass Social Security reform? It seems that showing leadership on a national scale with diverse interests is a tad harder than running a grad school policy round-table. Oddly, the left seems befuddled by actual diversity of opinion, rather than the faux diversity with lock-stepped beliefs they built in academia and among themselves."
• How good is good? - From the comments: "I read once that a prude is a good woman in the worst sense of the word."
• Beware the pitfalls of renting rooms to head off foreclosure - "In fact, Kilgore says, those looking for a mortgage loan modification may actually be encouraged to go this route because such modifications usually require the homeowner to demonstrate some type of increased income in order to qualify for the modification. Renting out rooms is a quick way to do this.
  
  But, she points out, anyone thinking of becoming a landlord in their own homes needs to go into such a venture with eyes wide open. There are many potential pitfalls.
  
  For example, Kilgore says a leaky roof may be a mere inconvenience for you and your family, remedied with a bucket or two strategically placed. But if it happens to be leaking over the heads of your new tenants, local laws may mandate that you repair the roof, which can be costly."
• Anything But Studying - "The latest snapshot of how University of California students spend their time suggests sleep and socializing were far more important than classes and studying to the average undergraduate there. But that was two years ago, before institutions and families plunged into economic turmoil, and things may have changed.
  
  In a survey conducted on all nine of the university’s undergraduate campuses in the spring of 2008 and completed by 63,600 students, students on average reported getting six-and-a-half hours of sleep each night and spending 41 hours a week on social and leisure activities. Meanwhile, students said they spent a little more than 28 hours each week combined on class and homework.
  . . .
  Students spent on average 7.6 hours a week working a job, 6.1 hours on co-curricular activities and 1.8 hours on religious or spiritual activities. Higher tuition and greater financial pressures within families may force students to take on more hours of work.
  . . .
  In average weekly study time, the difference between a 3.60 GPA and a 2.79 or lower GPA is only about an hour a week, with high-GPA students averaging about 13 hours a week of studying while students with GPAs of 2.79 or lower reported studying for a little less than 12 hours each week.
  
  But high joblessness rates, coupled with rising tuition and the potential that students will graduate with greater debt burdens, could lead students to spend more time focused on their studies, Brint said. 'Because it’s costing more and because there’s so much uncertainty out there about whether you can get a job and what kind of job it is, it could cause people to redouble their efforts in the classroom.'"

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February 12, 2010 08:37 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

The President's Budget, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

The President's Budget

This course, held each year in mid-February, focuses on the President's next fiscal year budget proposal released in early February. Instructors discuss the policy initiatives of the President and how Congress will respond to them.

Attendees participate in a comprehensive overview and analysis of the President's most current budget, Congressional response, and appropriations and authorizations process reviews.

February 23, 2010, 8:30 am - 4:15 pm

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 (Gallery Place / Chinatown Metro stop)

This is an elective course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see PresidentsBudget.com

February 11, 2010 08:27 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Recess"

Recess: Temporary interruption or suspension of a committee or chamber meeting. In the House, the Speaker is authorized to declare recesses. In the Senate, the chamber often recesses rather than adjourns at the end of the day so as not to trigger a new legislative day.

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

February 11, 2010 07:37 AM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 18 (Eighteenth Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 18 (18th Amendment)

Amendment XVIII.

Passed by Congress December 18, 1917. Ratified January 16, 1919. Repealed by amendment 21.

Section 1.
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

More

• Eighteenth Amendment - Wikipedia
• Eighteenth Amendment - Findlaw

Prohibition: To Drink or Not to Drink (Britannica.com)


A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 10, 2010 11:47 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/9/10

Some Excerpts from Comedy Session at AEA Annual Meeting

• Strategies for Working with Congress: Effective Communication and Advocacy on Capitol Hill, February 18, 2010
• The President's Budget, February 23, 2010
• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• Boston cops arrest people who videotape their actions - "They’re invoking laws against wiretapping, which you might naively think were passed to protect the people from the authorities, not vice versa, [Boston Globe/Daniel Rowinski, New England Center for Investigative Reporting; Radley Balko, Reason "Hit and Run"] Now lawyer Simon Glik, who was arrested for recording an arrest, is suing three cops and the city ."
• Super Bowl 44 - "Most will spend three hours or more watching flickering television images to catch 11 minutes of actual playing, during which they will learn what I will learn in one second the next day: who won."

Pen spinning gets competitive in Hong Kong

• Revisiting the Marriage Supermarket - "Imagine, says Tim, a marriage supermarket. In this supermarket any man and woman who pair up get $100 to split between them. Suppose 20 men and 20 women show up at the supermarket, it's pretty clear that all the men and women will pair up and split the $100 gain about equally, $50,$50. Now imagine that the sex ratio changes to 19 men and 20 women. Surprisingly, a tiny change in the ratio has a big effect on the outcome.
  
  Imagine that 19 men and women have paired up splitting the gains $50:$50 but leaving one woman with neither a spouse nor any gain. Being rational this unmatched woman is unlikely to accede to being left with nothing and will instead muscle in on an existing pairing offering the man say a $60:$40 split. The man being rational will accept but this still leaves one women unpaired and she will now counter-offer $70:$30. And so it goes."
• “Heart Attack restaurant owner sues Heart Stoppers owner over theme” - "Two US restaurants are battling in court over who originated the medical disaster theme of serving food unhealthy enough to put diners in hospital."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."

What if famous filmmakers directed the Super Bowl?

• Photosynthesis uses quantum interactions to harvest light - "A new experimental setup using photosynthetic proteins shows that, when they are stimulated with light, they interact on a quantum level: their states are dependent on one another, which allows them to transmit energy efficiently.
  
  Photosynthesis relies on proteins that absorb light, which excites their electrons, giving them enough energy to move within or even exit the molecule. This excitation energy is transmitted between molecules to a reaction center, where it is harvested for use by the organism. Until recently, scientists thought that the energy was transferred according to classical laws because of the size and complexity of the proteins, but this new research shows that quantum interactions are at work."
• Ford Shelby GT500: Too Much Is Just Enough - "This baby’s got 550 horsepower and 510 foot-pounds of torque. With those kinds of figures, it’s easy to see just what a monster of a car the GT500 should be at the track or on the strip.
  
  That’s a 10 horsepower boost over the previous model. It comes from an all-new 5.4-liter supercharged aluminum engine that is 102 pounds lighter than the previous cast-iron plant and uses Ford’s patented plasma-coating technology. That cuts friction and shaves another 8.5 pounds from the block because the cylinders don’t need cast iron liners. Sweet! Not only that, but the new mill offers better fuel economy than the outgoing GT500, returning a claimed 23 mpg highway and 15 city. Yeah, yeah… that’s nothing great. But we’re talking about a hardcore muscle car here, and it is good enough to eliminate the gas guzzler tax. The boost in fuel economy comes from, among other things, lower weight and electric power assist steering."

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February 9, 2010 09:57 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

Capitol Hill Workshop, 3-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

Capitol Hill Workshop: Politics, Policy, and Process

Intensive 3-day congressional operations workshop

Congressional decision-making is driven by politics, policy and process. In this engaging workshop, Washington-based experts discuss these 3 P's and help you understand the complete policy-making process.

You’ll get a solid understanding of:

• Congressional operations and the legislative process
  
• How public and foreign policy become law
  
• Congressional politics and leadership
  
• Congressional budgeting today
  
• The role of OMB in the legislative process
  
• Effective communication with Congress
  
• How the media covers the Hill
  
• Current campaign and election trends
  
• How members of Congress advance their legislative, public policy and political agendas
  
• How personal and committee staff work
  
• How you can build win/win relationships with staffers

Attend a congressional hearing and see the process in action.

March 3-5, 2010, 8:30 am - 4 pm all three days.

Approved for 1.7 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: On Capitol Hill in Washington, DC

This is a required course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations and for the Certificate in Communication and Advocacy.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see CapitolHillWorkshop.com

February 8, 2010 01:57 PM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/7/10

Robert C. Byrd Center for Rural Health

Has Carly Fiorina jumped the shark -- or the sheep?

Mike Gravel 2008

• Congress in a Nutshell: Understanding Congress, February 10, 2010
• Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process, February 11, 2010
• Strategies for Working with Congress: Effective Communication and Advocacy on Capitol Hill, February 18, 2010
• The President's Budget, February 23, 2010
• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• Natural Gas – We Got it Half Right - "Our energy situation broadly cleaves into two main functions – natural gas, and electricity. Natural gas is used for industry, heating homes and powering stoves, and is taking a greater portion of the electrical generation load. Electricity also overlaps with gas when it comes to home heating and cooling, and is obviously a large component for industrial uses. However, the natural gas and electricity energy industries in the United States have moved in profoundly different directions over the last few decades. The purpose of this post is to describe where we are, as a country, with regards to natural gas. In short -- we got it half right.
  
  Natural gas has three main components, broadly speaking – 1) exploration / extraction 2) transportation 3) distribution. In general, natural gas is lightly regulated for exploration / extraction, has general principles for transportation (open access) and is pretty heavily regulated for distribution (local monopolies). "
• LPS: Mortgage Delinquencies Reach 10% - "More foreclosures and short sales coming!"
• Moody's: Deficits Jeopardize U.S. Government's Aaa Bond Rating - "In other words, the Federal government is moving in the wrong direction on fiscal, tax and economic policy, which is beginning to erode what was once a rock-solid trust in its creditworthiness on the part of the capital markets. And these guys have been pretty tolerant of the patterns of Federal fiscal irresponsibility we've seen in recent decades—so you know it's getting really bad when the markets quietly start sounding the alarm.
  
  To that point, Arizona Republic columnist Bob Robb is right in pointing out today that the latest Obama budget effectively sets a new--and much higher--baseline for federal spending, with no draw-down in sight even after the economy recovers."
• War on AIDS Hangs in Balance as U.S. Curbs Help for Africa - "Seven years after the U.S. launched its widely hailed program to fight AIDS in the developing world, the battle is reaching a critical turning point. The growth in U.S. funding, which underwrites nearly half the world's AIDS relief, has slowed dramatically. At the same time, the number of people requiring treatment has skyrocketed.
  . . .
  The most immediate concern is getting enough lifesaving drugs to all those who need them. Under the Bush administration, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, set aggressive goals for getting people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, into drug therapy, eventually enrolling some 2.4 million by the end of last year. The Obama administration, which plans to expand international AIDS treatment to at least 4 million by 2013, nevertheless has signaled nearly flat budgets through fiscal 2011. Critics are questioning whether the reduced spending pace means the administration doesn't plan to use the full $48 billion authorized by Congress by 2013."
• Are law schools pulling a “Plato’s Cave?” - "From kindergarten’s opening minutes forward, it’s beyond axiomatic that 'college is a must' and 'education is the answer.' One’s own VIP ticket, a backstage pass to a concert called success. Early indeed it begins. Before Junior is through soiling his diapers, he’s likely endured a flickering barrage of phonics-building DVDs, cognitive-theory coaches, and other fashionable accessories of the preschool-pimp parasites to whom his parents earnestly fell victim. It’s beyond endemic.
  . . .
  On the subject of cost, let’s further break down the tuition digits for a laughing-stock 'school' like Seton Hall. You’re looking at $44,000 a year; $22,000 a semester. There are roughly 14 weeks in a semester with about 15 hours of class a week. Do the math. You’re paying roughly $104 an hour, or $1.73 a minute at sticker price. A long-distance call to your uncle in Madagascar is probably cheaper.
  . . .
  The JD carnival’s opening act is invariably the 'successful alumni' spiel. These masters of illusion make David Copperfield seem a mere piker. Like Plato’s parable, the lemmings march lock-step into an auditorium’s dimmed cave and intently watch these 'shadows' grab the podium and commence their smoke n’ mirrors act. Without fail, these shadow grad shills are valedictorian and/or Top 1% types, the hand-picked winners of the TTT lottery. Maybe the ABA brochures should adopt a new sweepstakes-esque catchphrase, such as 'all it takes is Access Group and a dream' or 'hey, you never know?' Why not? As Big Debt readers know, one’s chances of success in today’s glutted legal industry is as likely as a winning Powerball ticket.
  . . .
  Kids, seriously, if you are currently enrolled at Seton Hall, Brooklyn, ‘Bozo, NYLS or any other also-ran private school, take a good, hard look at first semester grades. Realize that you can bail out now and save yourself a lifetime of crushing, impoverished misery. You’re on board the Titanic and the iceberg has been hit, but lifeboats remain. Board them now. Don’t go down with the ship and hope you’ll find some flotsam or jetsam to grab hold of in the drying cesspool of the legal job market. There is no 'market' to speak of, just hordes of heavily indebted losers cold-sending resumes into craigslist’s barren ghetto. Your leverage via a vis salary is pathetic, like trying to budge a boulder with a chopstick. Jobs paying south of 40 (and even 30) K a year are getting bombarded with hundreds of resumes in the infamous 'white-out' phenomenon described in our Shingle Hanger post last month.
  . . .
  Today’s kids have- we posit- no excuse. They’ve heard the blogosphere’s bad news and thus proceed at their peril. Most make the law-school decision mindlessly as moths flying into a porchlight (and encountering a similar result). Yet onward the lemmings flutter, munching popcorn in Plato’s cave as the charade proceeds. At pre-law websites like Top Law Schools, the children find their prospects forever bullish, naïve as toddlers awaiting Santa’s chimney-slide. They’re in for an empty stocking and a face-full of soot. Better burn that lump of coal Santa leaves you for heat, since that’s the only 'gift' you’re getting from today’s legal industry, kids."
• School Crisis In Nevada; Governor Seeks To Cancel Collective Bargaining With Schools Because The State Is Broke - "Nevada has an $881 million budget deficit and drastic cuts are on the horizon for education. Governor Gibbons is investigating options of canceling collective bargaining agreements with school districts. Unfortunately that maneuver is likely illegal.
  . . .
  Budget crises in nearly every state are the defining problem right now, yet none of the other bloggers are talking about it. I am swamped with material and struggling to keep up."
• State Pensions, from Scott Brooks - "The pension problem in this country is a time bomb that is set to go and will likely either cripple the nation or be one of the final straws that breaks our back. Remember, pensions are backed up by the PBGC.."
• It's a Scam! - "Contrary to what our cowardly commenter claims, however, a physician group cannot 'comply' with the messenger model. The whole thing is a scam. Since the messenger model is basically the FTC's imaginary friend, only the FTC knows what it looks like. So even if a physician group spends thousands of dollars on antitrust counsel -- in many cases, an ex-FTC lawyer -- who tells them exactly how to 'comply' with the messenger model, the FTC will just turn around and say, 'No, that's not what we meant!'
  
  Keep this in mind. There's been at least 40 or 50 FTC cases brought against physician groups for violating the messenger model policy. This encompasses something like 15,000 physicians. Is it really plausible that all of them didn't know how to comply with the rule? Or is it more likely that the FTC adopted the messenger model as a way of ratcheting up the demand for antitrust lawyers? Call me a skeptic, but I'm going with option B."
• The Quiet Energy Revolution - "Two monumental shifts in the world of energy are underway right now: one technological, the other financial. They will change the way we power our lives (especially our cars), provide a real measure of energy security, and help curb greenhouse gas emissions. Neither shift has anything to do with the turn to a green renewable energy economy promised by President Obama. Physics ensures that will never happen, no matter how much wishful thinking (and government subsidy) is applied. Sorry, greens, carbon-based energy will continue to dominate our energy future, not windmills or solar panels.
  
  The first profound shift was made possible by a little-noticed technological breakthrough in the last three years that has changed the way we extract natural gas. Engineers now make use of two important innovations. One is horizontal, or directional, drilling, which permits wells to move laterally beneath the surface instead of going straight down. This technology minimizes the number of holes that have to be drilled, leaving a smaller surface footprint and accessing a larger area. The other technology is hydraulic fracturing, used to extract gas trapped in porous shale rock. In this process, also known as fracking, water and chemicals are pumped at tremendous pressure into shale rock formations to push gas into pockets for easier recovery.
  
  By marrying and perfecting the two processes into a technology called horizontal fracking, engineering has virtually created, from nothing, new natural gas resources, previously regarded as inaccessibly locked in useless shale deposits. Suddenly, the mammoth shale formations in Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, North Dakota, and elsewhere have the potential to produce abundant amounts of gas for decades to come."
• Your Neighbor is being foreclosed on but you don’t know it. 3 Identical Homes on the Same Street Telling us a Very Different Story Each. Real Homes of Genius -- A $630,000 Foreclosure in Cerritos has a Neighboring Home Renting for $2,150. Or You Can Buy a Similar Home Today for $549,000. - "The rental is identical in size to the other two homes. A 3 bedrooms and 1.75 bath home listed at 1,100 square feet. This is an excellent example of what is going on because we have virtually three identical homes all in the same block but telling us very different stories. You would have to be out of your mind to pay the current price. You would be buying at a peak low in mortgage rates in an area that can clearly only support a rental income of $2,150. Think about that. No investor in their right mind would pay this amount. And rates will go up. Just look what happened to the markets today once people realize a country can’t pay their debt (hello California!). If you bought this home as an investor, you would be negative cash flowing by over $1,000 per month depending on your down payment. That would be a dumb move right off the bat and keep in mind, for investment properties the interest rate is much higher and you have to go in with at least 20 percent down. This is why I believe we are far from a bottom in many markets that are filled with shadow inventory. And let us run those numbers."
• Sunlight memo to Congress: Here's how to do earmark disclosure - "President Obama's remarks during last State of the Union address included an admonition to Congress to change the way it discloses earmarks, by putting all of the information about every earmark on one web site that is easily accessible to the public.
  
  That was good advice and there is no practical or philosophical reason why Congress should delay doing that as soon as possible. But Congress being Congress, additional 'encouragement' will almost certainly be required.
  
  To that end, the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington non-profit devoted to increasing transparency and accountability in government, is circulating a useful How-to that should be required reading for every Member of Congress:"
• Grading Agencies’ High-Value Data Sets - "I wrote here a few weeks ago about the 'high-value data sets' -- three per agency -- that the federal government would soon be releasing at Data.gov. They were released on January 22nd, and we’ve been poring over them ever since. More on that below.
  
  Tomorrow, agencies are supposed to have their 'open government' sites put up -- sites where they make their data feeds available and easily findable for the public. There are a couple of different sites monitoring when those sites are going up.
  . . .
  With the help of Cato interns Solomon Stein and Sasha Davydenko, I assigned three points to each feed that had to do with management, deliberation, or results. The resulting numerical scores — 9, 6, 3, or 0 — translate into grades: A, B, C, or D respectively. F was reserved for agencies that didn’t produce feeds."
• Two Letters Re: Lessons Learned from the Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2010 - "The Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2010 is now melting away and as usual there were lessons learned. Many of these should have been 'known' before but we are never as prepared as we should be. In that vein I am going to rehash several things that went right, a few that went wrong, and others that we can improve on the next time that 'life as usual' is not."
• Weisberg: God Bless America? No, God Damn America! - "[Slate editor-in-chief Jacob] Weisberg is not just wrong in his parsing of American disenchantment. He's wrong to think it's a tragedy. Increasing numbers of Americans in the vast lands to be found outside the D.C. Beltway (join us, Jacob, the water's fine!) understand that government delivers far too little at far too high a price. (Libertarians would take that realization much further, but we are banned from Weisberg's empire of the mind.) Skepticism about authority, expectation of better performance, and a determination to get more for your dollar are not problems that need to be solved. They're bedrock American ideals."
• Gerard Alexander On the Condescending Attitude of the Democratic Party - "A day in hell for me would be spent having to listen to a debate between Michael Moore (or Paul Krugman) and Ann Coulter (or Bill O'Reilly)."

Ray Hudson, GolTV: "like a Jedi knight"




Ray Hudson, GolTV: "Stop talking about tennis players and stupid Hollywood hackers!"

Hudson described the goal to me this way. “It was an overhead kick, at an angle, just into the corner of the box, and I called it, if I remember correctly, ‘A Bernini sculpture of a goal, that rivals the Ecstasy of St. Teresa.’ Now, there are probably two people around the United States tuning in who had even heard of Bernini. But for me, it was that good. And in my opinion, instances like that need to be compared to something monumental, to something of an exquisiteness completely unique. And that sculpture came immediately to mind.” He went on: “[During the replays] there was this one wonderful shot of the defender who had been the closest to Ronny, who had just seen this goal, and he was simply stupefied. I described him like Lot’s wife, turning to salt. And then the next second the camera cut away to this little blonde boy in the stands, this little cherub in a Barcelona shirt, and he started smiling. I remember saying, ‘His big bright eyes have just grown the size of saucer plates. He’s never seen anything like this in his life, and he never will again.’"

• The Magisterial Goal - "[Soccer announcer Ray] Hudson made his career first as a soccer player--for Newcastle United in England, and later for various teams in the defunct North American Soccer League. But he is best known for announcing the modern game for GolTV. Commentary for a soccer match, more so than in any other sport, is like the musical accompaniment to ballet. Therefore as a broadcaster, Hudson is comparable to the conductor of an orchestra playing in the pit beneath a stage of dancers; he adds context and emotion to the drama. No wonder, then, that he often likens footballers to beautiful women. 'I’m telling you man,' Hudson once said of FC Barcelona’s seventeen-year-old striker, Bojan Krkic, 'this kid could be the best thing on two legs since Sophia Loren.'
  
  Unlike most American sports, soccer is a fluid game, with frequent changes of possession and few clear, numeric statistics to evaluate. Soccer is improvisational, whereas American football is regimented. In football, plays are designed then executed, to greater or lesser success. In soccer, players practice formations and then improvise within a spontaneous framework. Therefore soccer, whose action is as constant as light, requires a reactive, jazz-like call."
• Student Protest Forces Yuba College Board To Rescind Chancellor's Raise; Tuition Soars Everywhere - "Inquiring minds are asking 'Why is tuition soaring?'
  
  One of the answers is can be found in the first article: School boards are stacked with greedy pigs voting to give administrators $30,000 raises in spite of everything going on in the economy.
  
  However, the big reason is student loan guarantees.
  
  When government guarantees student loans, there is every incentive for the greedy school boards to give themselves and all the administrators big fat raises on top of their already bloated pensions.
  
  It should be no surprise to find that is what they have done year in and year out. To pay for it, they have to jack up tuition every year."
• Save Cash, Buy a Clunker - "Just when you thought that America’s supply of cheap cars fell victim to Cash for Clunkers, a new website specializing in heaps costing less than $1,000 showcases prime examples of automotive detritus -- some of which are still capable of highway travel.
  
  Cars for a Grand is the brainchild of online entrepreneurs Chris Hedgecock and Jorge Gonzalez, the same guys behind Zero Paid. The site allows for individual users to post cars for sale, and scours eBay and classified ads for the best buckets of bolts. To promote the site, the founders bought a 1974 Pontiac LeMans for $900 and drove it across the country last summer."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• Tough Guy Challenge 2010 - "The 24th annual Tough Guy Challenge took place last weekend, on Sunday, January 31st, on South Perton Farm, near Wolverhampton, England. Despite being billed as 'the safest most dangerous taste of physical and mental endurance pain in the world', this year's race still attracted over 5,000 men and women - all of them signing a disclaimer saying 'It's my own bloody fault for being here'. About 600 racers did not complete the course this year - the winner being Paul Jones of Oswestry, England, completing the course in one hour 18 minutes. The Challenge is annual event to raise cash for charity with funds going to the Mr. Mouse Farm for Unfortunates. Special thanks today to photographer Mike King, who was kind enough to share 16 of his great photographs of the 2010 Tough Guy Challenge below. (31 photos total)"
• Flight 1549 - time lapse of recovery of crippled Airbus A320 aircraft - impressive salvage job
• Comcast CEO Argues Rules Will Protect Customers In Merger, While Comcast Lawyers Argue Rules Are Unconstitutional - "I have to say that I'm not particularly concerned about Comcast and NBC merging. I'm all for it. If two companies that poorly run are getting together, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster. We've seen this game before, and it was called AOL-Time Warner. While it's difficult to think that anyone could screw up that badly again, if anyone can, it's the folks at NBC Universal."

"In The Loop"

• It's the phenome and not the genome: put your money on mortal flesh - "But the fact remains that for most of us, the genotype is much less relevant than the phenotype. What is phenotype? It is the things we can see, the outward or observable physical or biochemical characteristics and they are determined by both your genetic makeup and environmental influences. Your blond hair, your weight, your strange nose, green eyes and that funky shaped little toe of yours --all examples of phenotype.
  
  So what do I mean when I say phenotype is more relevant than genotype? Well, let's say a new patient, a male, walks into my office and he is in his fifties. Let's say he happens to have the outline of a pack of cigarettes showing in his front pocket. As a male he already has one risk factor for coronary artery disease--just being male, alas. The cigarettes tell me that he is four times more likely to have a heart attack than his peers who don't smoke. His risk of sudden death is at least doubled. Let's say I notice he happens to be carrying more than 30 pounds of extra poundage above the belt line: that allows me to predict he has a higher chance of being at risk for diabetes, if he is not already frankly diabetic. Let's say that I notice too the pale outline of a recently-removed wedding ring (I can't help it, my eyes are always looking at the body as text--even when I am out of the hospital), then I know that his risk of death as a recently divorced man can be double that of his married peers."
• The People's Historian? Howard Zinn was a master of agitprop, not history - "Eggers is right about that. I'm sorry to sound a discordant note about this 'great' man (The Guardian), this historian and activist of 'limitless depth' (RT, who ceded hours of its coverage to the 'American mahatma'). But while Zinn might have been an effective activist and a man of great modesty, he was an exceptionally bad historian.
  
  It's a mystery how A People's History of the United States, which has sold over a million copies and currently sits at number fourteen on the Amazon bestseller list, has become so popular with students, Hollywood types, and academics. It is a book of no original research and no original ideas; a tedious aggregation of American crimes (both real and imagined) and deliberate elisions of inconvenient facts and historical events.
  
  Much of the criticism of Zinn has come from dissenters on the left. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once remarked that 'I don't take him very seriously. He's a polemicist, not a historian.' Last year, the liberal historian Sean Wilentz referred to the 'balefully influential works of Howard Zinn.' Reviewing A People's History in The American Scholar, Harvard University professor Oscar Handlin denounced 'the deranged quality of his fairy tale, in which the incidents are made to fit the legend, no matter how intractable the evidence of American history.' Socialist historian Michael Kazin judged Zinn's most famous work 'bad history, albeit gilded with virtuous intentions.'
  
  Just how poor is Zinn's history? After hearing of his death, I opened one of his books to a random page (Failure to Quit, p. 118) and was informed that there was 'no evidence' that Muammar Qaddafi's Libya was behind the 1986 bombing of La Belle Discotheque in Berlin. Whatever one thinks of the Reagan administration's response, it is flat wrong, bordering on dishonest, to argue that the plot wasn't masterminded in Tripoli.
  . . .
  But it is clear that those who have praised his work do so because they appreciate his conclusions, while ignoring his shoddy methodology."
• Is the iPad the New Edsel? - "In the parlance of the wise Dr. McCracken, Apple sorely needs a Chief Culture Officer. The iPad is a technological marvel, and surely goes about delivering on user needs like nobody's business, but just as we mortal men are not mere economic units, so must a device aspire to be a complete emotional experience. What pains me here is that Apple is the leader in this arena, the ace purveyor of seamless, compelling experiences. I can only assume they had no intention of becoming the New Edsel, so how did we get here?"
• Free-Range Kids and the Economic Way of Thinking - "I just finished reading Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids (subtitle: 'Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry') and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Her basic argument is that many parents have totally misjudged the real dangers to their children and have chosen to focus on the most unlikely of danger scenarios, with the result that kids are more or less bubble-wrapped through childhood and adolescence, and do not learn self-reliance and how to navigate the world, and are not resilient in the face of failure.
  . . .
  I am not willing to argue causality about this next point, but I do think it says something about the zeitgeist that many parents are cushioning their kids from failure at the same time we've entered the world of the Permanent Bailouts."
• Jon Stewart Destroys, Disembowels, Mauls, Hammers, Rips, Slams & B***** Slaps Bloggers - "I didn't know that I did that."
• Supply and Demand - "The sex ratio on many U.S. campuses is around 60/40 and rising. The NYTimes has an excellent piece on the predictable consequences for dating."
• kululua Airline’s Rebranding Is Like Aviation 101 - "[South Africa’s kulula airline's] recent rebranding will leave every passenger with a basic knowledge of aviation and aircraft." (4 photos)
• Bus Saturday Finale: Scenicruiser Design Inspiration Discovered - "The Greyhound Scenicruiser was iconic, and set off a rash of imitators world-wide. Based on a design of Raymond Loewy supposedly inspired on an earlier patent by Roland E. Gegoux, it was hailed as a stylistic and practical breakthrough. But it was anything but new or original, as this 1937 Kenworth bus illustrates quite well. It was used in the north west for a number of years."
• My Austin WiMAX Experience Was Good, But Not Good Enough - "I spent the last few weeks roaming around Austin with a dual-mode WiMAX modem from Sprint in order to see how well it works here. The verdict: It’s not strong enough to be a wireline replacement, but if I didn’t have a contract to fulfill on Verizon I’d ditch my MiFi and pick up the Overdrive 4G/3G personal hotspot and use that as my primary data connection."

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February 7, 2010 10:37 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 17 (Seventeenth Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 17 (17th Amendment)

Amendment XVII.

Passed by Congress May 13, 1912. Ratified April 8, 1913.

Note: Article I, section 3, of the Constitution was modified by the 17th amendment.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

More

• Seventeenth Amendment - Wikipedia
• Seventeenth Amendment - Findlaw
• Instruction and Recall

A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 6, 2010 11:27 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Electronic Vote"

Electronic Vote: A vote in the House using electronic voting machines. Members insert voting cards into one of the devices located throughout the House chamber.

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

February 5, 2010 08:57 AM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 2/3/10

Avatar Review: Part 1

Part 2

• Congress in a Nutshell: Understanding Congress, February 10, 2010
• Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process, February 11, 2010
• Strategies for Working with Congress: Effective Communication and Advocacy on Capitol Hill, February 18, 2010
• The President's Budget, February 23, 2010
• The Defense Budget, February 26, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, March 3-5, 2010
• Speechwriting: Preparing Speeches and Oral Presentations, March 12, 2010
• TARP Inspector General: Government Programs "risk re-inflating bubble" - "We've been discussing this for some time, and there is a good chance that house prices will fall further as the government support is withdrawn since house prices appear too high based on price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios."
• The First Year of Obama's Failed Economic Policies: The Worst May Yet Be Avoided - "In response to the next leg down, Bernanke will monetize debt at an even more furious and clever pace, perhaps in alliance with the Bank of England and Bank of Japan. The ECB resists, and all who balk will be chastised by the monied powers and their demimonde, the ratings agencies and global banks. This is modern warfare of a sort.
  
  We do not expect the corruption of the world's reserves to be so blatant that the inflation will immediately appear, except in more subtle manner. At some point it may explode, especially if Ben is particularly good at concealing its subtle growth."
• Roubini Sees ‘Dismal’ Growth as Summers Rues ‘Human Recession’ - "'The headline number will look large and big, but actually when you dissect it, it’s very dismal and poor,' Roubini said in a Jan. 30 Bloomberg Television interview following a U.S. Commerce Department report that showed economic expansion of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter. 'I think we are in trouble.'
  
  Roubini said more than half of the growth was related to a replenishing of depleted inventories and that consumption was reliant on monetary and fiscal stimulus. As these forces ebb, the rate will slow to 1.5 percent in the second half of 2010."
• At work, part II - "Although the global economic downturn no longer appears to be heading off a cliff, signs of stability or recovery are still sporadic and tenuous. As news stories look for signs of of the direction of economic indicators, photographs fill the wires of people working from all over. Once more, I've collected some of these disparate photos over the past couple of months, composing another global portrait we humans at work around the world. (45 photos total)"
• Name that Blip Redux - "Even though I'm more skeptical of Tiebout competition than almost any economist I know, I still think that without federal subsidies, tax competition between states and localities would have kept their governments a lot smaller than the ones we see today. And I still can't figure out whether the current spending spike is a blip, or just a return to long-run trend."
• Ethics Expert on Global Warming... - "Mike Treder, Managing Director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology, notes that ALL those who disagree with him that Global Warming is going to kill billions unless we invest more in wind farms are either stupid or evil. One would think such a manichean understanding of a complex system would only be found in rural bars were everyone has a chain attached to their wallet."
• Real Homes of Genius -- Culver City Home selling for $744,500 but Neighbor Home is Renting for $2,250. The Rent versus Buy Analysis and 40 Years of Mortgage Data. - "How do you know if a home is priced at a right level? We have various metrics that we can use including common sense which seems to run in short supply. That is how we spotted the epic California housing bubble years ago while the real estate denial cheerleading crew thought that prices would simply continue to go up. In these mid-tier markets underlying incomes do not support current prices. It really is that simple. What is happening in these markets is this; homes are building up in the shadow inventory since fewer homes are actually selling but defaults are still rising as many Californians are unable to make their payments.
  . . .
  You can see the home we’ve been talking about highlighted above in red with the $744,500 listing price. I’ve circled the other home on the same street that is currently a rental in this market. The rental listing has the place at 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. Only a few houses away and 1 bedroom less. What is the monthly rental price? $2,250. You can rent two of these places for the price of the mortgage on the other place!
  
  This is the kind of metrics that scream housing bubble. And keep in mind rental prices are more sensitive to monthly data because you are paying this amount out of your net income. No tax breaks, toxic mortgages, or any other gimmick. One simple rule when evaluating real estate is trying to figure out a home price based on rental income. One I use is the following:"
• Complaint: Amazon.com should charge tax for sales in Va. - "When Amazon.com sells a book for $10 or a television set for $1,200 to Virginia consumers, the retailer charges no sales tax.
  
  Amazon.com Inc., based in Seattle, operates a fulfillment center and a data center in Virginia. According to federal and Virginia law, a company with a physical presence or 'nexus' in the state must collect sales tax on purchases there, even if the business has headquarters outside the state."
• The Other Side of the Coin - "Marriage is a monopoly in that my wife and I have both forsworn allowing others to compete with us to supply the other with love services. (That is 'love' services, not just sexual services.) I don't have to come home to see a line of men vying to provide my wife attention and gentleness and offer to take her to dinner and the ballet. Neither does she have to deal with a line of women vying to do the same for me (except the ballet part). Like any good monopoly then, you can expect to receive a lower quality product at a higher price."
• *The Cleanest Race* - "This is a very interesting book about the ideologies behind North Korea. The author is B.R. Myers and the subtitle is How North Koreans See Themselves -- and Why it Matters. Excerpt:
  . . .
  I also recommend the new book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick. Excerpt:"
• A Nation of Racist Dwarfs - "Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.
  
  But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming."
• U.S. Judge Grants Political Asylum to German Homeschoolers - "For one German family, it turns out that the U.S. - despite our own draconian education regulations - has served as a place for asylum. Last week, a judge granted this family this status as a means of protecting their essential human rights. 'Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress,' said Immigration Judge Lawrence O, Burman. 'This family has a well-founded fear of persecution...therefore, they are eligible for asylum...and the court will grant asylum.'"
• “How Do You Fix a Bill that Hasn’t Been Passed Yet?” - "Some House Democrats seem prepared to pass the Senate health care bill if the Senate will use the reconciliation process to amend the health care legislation. Yet there’s a catch. Some House Democrats want the Senate to go first, and as the Plum Line reports, congressional parliamentarians are not quite sure how to do this."
  
  From the comments: "Imagine, one set of politicians refusing to trust another set, from their own party, no less. You’d think they know each other pretty well. I’d say that in this season the voters have come to know them that well, also."
• Teaching remedial writing - "Jack Miller sees a 'wide' but not a 'rich' diversity in his remedial writing students at a Minnesota community college. Though they come from different backgrounds, most 'have little understanding of grammar . . . and see it as a set of arbitrary ‘rules’ concocted by sadistic pedants harboring grudges against the young.'
  . . .
  About 20 percent don’t know how to behave in a classroom, he writes."
• Former lobbyists in senior Obama administration positions - "Although Barack Obama promised lobbyists would not serve in his White House, and issued executive orders restricting former lobbyists, more than 40 ex-lobbyists now populate top jobs in the Obama administration, including three Cabinet secretaries, the Director of Central Intelligence, and many senior White House officials."
• Inside Obama's Hologram (Reason, March 2010) - "The fact is, Obama has presided over the biggest spending increase since World War II after promising a 'net spending cut,' enacted multiple taxes after multiply promising not to, kept deliberations secret after vowing 'unprecedented transparency,' and intruded into private industry to an extent not contemplated since the collapse of communism." (Review of "Inside Obama's Brain" by Sasha Abramsky.).
• Presidential Promises and Pretenses - "The day before President Obama delivered his State of the Union address last week, The New York Times reported that 'aides said he would accept responsibility, though not necessarily blame' for failing to deliver on promises he made during his campaign. If you accept responsibility for something bad, aren’t you accepting blame by definition? Not if you’re Barack Obama, who has a talent for accepting responsibility while minimizing and deflecting it.
  . . .
  The president is even less forthright when it comes to the fiscal responsibility he keeps promising. On Monday he declared, 'We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.'
  
  Yet somehow he manages to do so. Obama's much-ballyhooed spending 'freeze' would affect just one-eighth of the budget, would not begin until 2011, and would be accompanied by continued increases in outlays on the president's pet projects.
  . . .
  In his SOTU address, Obama bemoaned 'a deficit of trust--deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years.' He blamed the public's 'disappointment' and 'cynicism' on powerful lobbyists, reckless bankers, highly paid CEOs, superficial TV pundits, and mud-slinging politicians. Conspicuously missing from the list: a president who breaks promises while pretending he isn't."

Welcome to North Korea by Peter Tetteroo and Raymond Feddema / Documentary Educational Video

• Clash of the titans - "But if publishers themselves are selling digital versions of their books, and all that's needed to liberate them is a little hacking, the calculus changes. Hacking is fun in a way that proofreading is not. Let us pause here and observe a moment of silence for the death of the idea that book pirates, more literary and therefore more moral than their peers, will somehow prove honorable, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. To the contrary, the pirate interviewed by the Millions said that he deliberately avoided stealing the works of the most successful authors, because they can afford lawyers. Instead he limits his purloining to the work of less commercial writers, such as John Barth, whom he calls 'someone who no longer sells very well, I imagine.' Such nobility! 'From those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.' If electronic reading devices catch on, the threat of piracy to book publishers--and to authors, at all income levels--is very real." ht Marginal Revolution
  
• Bayonets Hit the Mark - "Well, a little Googleing and low and behold it turns out that bunch of maniac Scots from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders got ambushed by about 100 Mahdi militiamen near Basra, fought it out, and when they ran low on ammunition, fixed bayonets and went to town.
  
  Based on an after-​​action report found at this link, the intimidation factor of the bayonet and the surprise such a charge caused among the enemy used to engagements at a distance were pivotal."
  
• On What Freaking Basis? - "Ooh, how can I overcome my embarrassment? Look, I don’t think I have ever argued that Phoenix Light Rail was run poorly or didn’t have pretty trains. And I don’t know if moving 18,000 round trip riders a day in a metropolitan area of 4.3 million people is a lot or a little (though 0.4% looks small to me, that is probably just my 'pre-web' thinking, whatever the hell that is).
  
  The problem is that it is freaking expensive, so it is a beautiful toy as long as one is not paying for it. Specifically, it’s capital costs are $75,000 per daily round trip rider, and every proposed addition is slated to be worse on this metric (meaning the law of diminishing returns dominates network effects, which is not surprising in this least dense of all American cities).
  
  Already, like in Portland and San Francisco, the inflexibility of servicing this capital cost (it never goes away, even in recessions) is causing the city to give up bus service, the exact effect that caused rail to reduce rather than increase transit’s total share of commuters in that wet dream of all rail planners, Portland. Soon, we will have figures for net operating loss and energy use, but expect them to be disappointing, as they have in every other city (and early returns were that fares were covering less than 25% of operating costs)."
  
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
  
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the late 1960s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
  
• Love Means Never Having to Say 404 Error - "A New Jersey inventor unveiled a $9,000 sex robot at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas earlier this month, and it’s hard to say who should be more concerned: hookers, man’s best friend, or Elvis impersonators. With her silicone boobs and silicon brain, Roxxxy could eventually put them all out of business."
  
• Lentz: Don’t Like The Gas Pedal Fix? Insist On Replacement! - "In an interview with Toyota’s Jim Lentz yesterday evening, NPR asked why Toyota was using a redesigned pedal for new production, but only offering the shim fix to existing customers. Lentz insisted that the repaired pedals would be as good as the redesigned pedal, that the costs of repair and replacement were about the same, and that the main reason Toyota was repairing rather than replacing recalled pedals was the desire to 'get customers back on the road… as quickly as we possibly can.' That’s when NPR went for the jugular."
  
  Hmmm. Back on the road as quickly as we can may not have been the best choice of words....
  
• An Electric Boost for Bicyclists - " One barrier to wider adoption of electric bicycles in the United States and Europe may be the culture of cycling. Bicycle riders have long valued cycling as a sport and a form of exercise, not simply as a utilitarian means of transportation, and many of them look down their noses at electric bikes.
  
  'To the core cyclist, it’s cheating,' said Loren Mooney, editor in chief of Bicycling Magazine. 'Marketers understand this, and it’s why some have put e-bikes in mass retailers like Best Buy, rather than engaging in the uphill battle of trying to sell them in bike shops.'" Sniff, sniff.

Unipartisan PAYGO Lite




New Orleans coroner’s race ad

• Jobs calls Adobe lazy, calls Google on the their “bullshit” - "On the subject of Google, Steve said that their avowed policy of 'Do no Evil' is 'bullshit.' He called the release of the Nexus phone a direct attack on the iPhone, and stated that he won’t let them win.
  
  Google wasn’t the only target of Jobsian ire, Adobe took their lumps on the subject of Flash. Steve called Adobe lazy, and said that while they have the potential to do interesting things, they don’t. He said that the reason Apple doesn’t support Flash is because it’s so buggy, and whenever a Mac crashes it’s most likely because of Flash. Steve also predicted that it won’t be long before everyone leaves Flash behind as the standard moves forward to HTML5. "
• Why not fix doctoral programs in length? - "And instead of a dissertation require one good published article."
• ATM Skimmers, Part II - "According to Doten, the U.S. Secret Service estimates that annual losses from ATM fraud totaled about $1 billion in 2008, or about $350,000 each day. Card skimming, where the fraudster affixes a bogus card reader on top of the real reader, accounts for more than 80 percent of ATM fraud, Doten said."
• My NASA budget - "People, it's exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents. If I was king, getting rid of NASA would be one of the first things I would do. Instead, President O has found room somewhere in his newly announced 3.8 trillion dollar austerity budget to bump NASA's funding up to 19 billion dollars."

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February 3, 2010 09:07 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process

How Congress really works: in practice, not in theory.

Do you need to understand, or train others in, how a bill becomes law, basic congressional operations, the amendment tree or where in the legislative and public policy process you can have an impact? Do you have questions about Capitol Hill dynamics that no one can answer (or that you’re too afraid to ask)?

If your job requires you to understand and follow legislation, or if you’re new to government affairs, here's your chance to get up to speed in one information-packed day.

This seminar provides an in-depth examination of congressional operations, House and Senate legislative procedures, the work of committees, floor procedures, reconciliation of differences between houses and presidential action.

February 11, 2010, 9 am - 4:30 pm

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: DC Bar Conference Center, 1101 K Street NW, Suite 200 (12th and K Streets NW) in Washington, DC

This is a required course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see LegislativeProcess.com

February 2, 2010 09:47 PM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 16 (Sixteenth Amendment)

The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 16 (16th Amendment)

Amendment XVI.

Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.

Note: Article I, section 9, of the Constitution was modified by amendment 16.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

More

• Sixteenth Amendment - Wikipedia
• Sixteenth Amendment - Findlaw

16th Amendment

The Beatles - Taxman




A free download of our Pocket Constitution is available on Scribd.

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February 2, 2010 10:07 AM   Link    U.S. Constitution    Comments (0)

Finding a Job in Washington, DC

How to Find a Job in Washington, DC	How to Get a Job with the U.S. Federal Government	How to Obtain a Security Clearance from the U.S. Federal Government

If you don’t have the time to personally attend one of our live courses in Washington, DC, we offer convenient audio courses showing you how Washington works. ^TM

For more information and titles, see CapitolLearning.com

February 1, 2010 05:37 PM   Link    Career ~   Training    Comments (0)

Smart Grid: Modernizing Electric Power Transmission and Distribution; Energy Independence, Storage and Security; Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA); Improving Electrical Grid Efficiency, Communication, Reliability, and Resiliency; Integr

Smart Grid

Smart Grid
Modernizing Electric Power Transmission and Distribution; Energy Independence, Storage and Security; Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA); Improving Electrical Grid Efficiency, Communication, Reliability, and Resiliency; Integrating New and Renewable Energy Sources

Compiled by TheCapitol.Net
Authors: Stan Mark Kaplan, Fred Sissine, Amy Abel, Jon Wellinghoff, Suedeen G. Kelly, and James J. Hoecker

The electric grid delivers electricity from points of generation to consumers, and the electricity delivery network functions via two primary systems: the transmission system and the distribution system. The transmission system delivers electricity from power plants to distribution substations, while the distribution system delivers electricity from distribution substations to consumers. The grid also encompasses myriads of local area networks that use distributed energy resources to serve local loads and/or to meet specific application requirements for remote power, municipal or district power, premium power, and critical loads protection.

2009, 644 pages
ISBN: 1587331624 ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-162-6
Softcover book: $27.95

For more information, see 1626SmartGrid.com

February 1, 2010 09:47 AM   Link    Publications    Comments (0)