MONDAY,  DECEMBER 22,  2008

BIT OF A PROBLEM FOR CAROLINE - AT 10:32 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times: 

...Ms. Kennedy, who has asked Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — and who helped oversee the vetting process for Mr. Obama’s possible running mates — is declining to provide a variety of basic data, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime...

...Through a spokesman, she said she would not disclose that kind of information unless and until she becomes a senator.  “If Governor Paterson were to choose Caroline, she would, of course, comply with all disclosure requirements,” said the spokesman, Stefan Friedman.

COMMENT:  Once she becomes a senator, it's too late.  The whole idea of disclosure is to allow the governor, and the citizenry, to evaluate her.  The arrogance here is breathtaking.

REDEMPTION - AT 8:10 P.M. ET:  We bash the press regularly here, and for good reason, but we're happy to acknowledge progress and reform.  Author Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter, asserts that the Post is making progress in correcting the leftist bias on its news pages.  It's encouraging to read this:

...since Katharine Weymouth, a granddaughter of former Post Chairman Katharine Graham, became publisher a year ago, the paper has steadily become more fair. A graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School, she practiced law at Williams & Connolly in Washington prior to coming to the Post. After Weymouth named former Wall Street Journal Editor Marcus Brauchli executive editor last September, the switch to more balanced coverage became even more noticeable.

No longer do I pick up the paper to find slanted stories that suppress or ignore the other side or that mischaracterize issues to further a liberal agenda. Instead, honesty has been restored to the coverage. It has become more probing and interesting as well.

I go through the online edition each day, and I must say that the progress there has been limited.  But Kessler is a good source, and I take his judgment about the printed paper seriously.  The Post has, by the admission of its own ombudsman, lost readers over the bias question, and, if its leaders are addressing it seriously, more power to them.  For years the Post's editorial page has been superior to that of The New York Times.  If the news section shakes its problems, the Post can become the most important paper in the country. 

MORE ADVENTURES IN FACT CHECKING - AT 7:35 P.M. ET:  From AFP:   The New York Times admitted Monday it was duped into publishing a fake letter claiming to come from Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe that criticized Caroline Kennedy's senate bid as "appalling" and "not very democratic."
"What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton's seat?" read the letter, printed in Monday's editions of the leading US metropolitan daily.

"We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling ... Can we speak of American decline?" read the letter.

Later Monday, the newspaper published an editor's note on its website stating "this letter was a fake. It should not have been published."

COMMENT:  Fake phone calls and letters from people claiming to be high public officials are commonplace, and even experienced hands fall for them.  But checking the source of a letter to the editor is routine stuff.  This flap is another symbol of The Times's decline.

I PLEAD NEGLIGENCE - AT 7:18 P.M. ET:  I read something fascinating today while researching UA, but, for some reason, failed to note the source, and it isn't showing up in a Google search.  So, I stress that this isn't original with me, and I apologize to the author.  However, whoever it was noted that David Paterson, the governor of New York, got to where he got because his father, Basil Paterson, is an influential New York City politician.  Governor David Paterson will appoint the person to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.  The leading candidate is Caroline Kennedy.  So, the son of Basil Paterson will fill the Senate seat held by the wife of Bill Clinton, and will probably select Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F. Kennedy.

Is this a great state or what?  Any New Yorker from the right family can get to be senator, governor, you name it.  Look, at least it isn't Illinois, where they charge for these things.

WARMING, OR HOT AIR?

Posted at 10:09 a.m. ET

Frank Tipler, the distinguished mathematical physicist at Tulane University, is an Urgent Agenda reader.  We recently asked him for his view of the global-warming controversy, and he was kind enough to send us this thoughtful reply.  We reprint it in full.  Recommended reading:

As regards global warming, my view is essentially the same as yours: Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a scam, with no basis in science.

A few comments on my own particular view of global warming:

(1) I am particularly annoyed by the claims that the "the debate is over," because this was exactly the claim originally made against the Copernican theory of the Solar System.  Copernicus' opponents said the idea that the Earth was the third planet from the Sun was advanced by Aristrachus in 300 B.C. (true), and had been definitely refuted by 100 A.D.  The debate is over!  Sorry, it wasn't: the Earth IS the third planet.

(2)  It is obvious that anthropogenic global warming is not science at all, because a scientific theory makes non-obvious predictions which are then compared with observations that the average person can check for himself.  As we both know from our own observations, AGW theory has spectacularly failed to do this.  The theory has predicted steadily increasing global temperatures, and this has been refuted by experience.  NOW the global warmers claim that the Earth will enter a cooling period. In other words, whether the ice caps melt, or expand --- whatever happens --- the AGW theorists claim it confirms their theory.  A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

(3) In contrast, the alternative theory, that the increase and decrease of the Earth's average temperature in the near term follows the sunspot number, agrees (roughly) with observation.  And the observations were predicted before they occurred.  This is good science.

(4) I emphasized in point (2) that the average person has to be able to check the observations.  I emphasize this because I no longer trust "scientists" to report observations correctly.  I think the data is adjusted to confirm, as far as possible, AGW.  We've seen many recent cases where the data was cooked in climate studies.  In one case, Hanson and company claimed that October 2008 was the warmest October on record.  Watts looked at the data, and discovered that Hanson and company had used September's temperatures for Russia rather than October's.  I'm not surprised to learn that September is hotter than October in the Northern hemisphere.  

It snowed here in New Orleans last week and it was the second heaviest snowfall I've seen in the 25 years I've lived in New Orleans.  According to the local newspaper, it was the earliest snow had fallen in New Orleans since records were kept, beginning in 1850.  I myself have looked at the relative predictive power of Copernicus's theory and the then rival Ptolemaic theory. Copernicus was on the average twice as accurate, and the average person of the time could tell.  Similarly, anybody today can check the number of sunspots.  Or rather the lack of them.  When I first starting teaching astronomy at Tulane in the early 1980's, I would show sunspots to my students by pointing a small $25 reflecting telescope at the Sun, and focusing the Sun's image on the wall of the classroom.  Sunspots were obviously in the image on the wall.  I can't do this experiment today, because there are no sunspots.

(5) Another shocking thing about the AGW theory is that it is generating a loss of true scientific knowledge. The great astronomer William Herschel, the discoverer of the planet Uranus, observed in the early 1800's that warm weather was correlated with sunspot number.  Herschel noticed that warmer weather meant better crops, and thus fewer sunspots meant higher grain prices.  The AGW people are trying to do a disappearing act on these observations. Some are trying to deny the existence of the Maunder Minimum.   

(6) AGW supporters are also bringing back the Inquisition, where the power of the state is used to silence one's scientific opponents.  The case of  Bjorn Lomborg is illustrative.  Lomborg is a tenured professor of mathematics in Denmark.  Shortly after his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," was published by Cambridge University Press, Lomborg was charged and convicted (later reversed) of scientific fraud for being critical of the "consensus" view on AGW and other environmental questions.  Had the conviction been upheld, Lomborg would have been fired.  Stillman Drake, the world's leading Galileo scholar, demonstrates in his book "Galileo: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2001) that it was not theologians, but rather his fellow physicists (then called "natural philosophers"), who manipulated the Inquisition into trying and convicting Galileo.  The "out-of-the-mainsteam" Galileo had the gall to prove the consensus view, the Aristotlean theory, wrong by devising simple experiments that anyone could do.  Galileo's fellow scientists first tried to refute him by argument from authority.  They failed.  Then these "scientists" tried calling Galileo names, but this made no impression on the average person, who could see with his own eyes that Galileo was right.  Finally, Galileo's fellow "scientists"  called in the Inquisition to  silence him.  

I find it very disturbing that part of the Danish Inquisition's case against Lomborg was written by John Holdren, Obama's new science advisor. Holdren has recently written that people like Lomborg are "dangerous."  I think it is people like Holdren who are dangerous, because they are willing to use state power to silence their scientific opponents.

(7) I agree with Dick Lindzen that the AGW nonsense is generated by government funding of science.  If a guy agrees with AGW, then he can get a government contract. If he is a skeptic, then no contract.  There is a professor at Tulane, with a Ph.D in paleoclimatology, who is as skeptical as I am about AGW, but he'd never be considered for tenure at Tulane because of his professional opinion. No government contracts, no tenure.

(8)  This is why I am astounded that people who should know better, like Newt Gingrich, advocate increased government funding for scientific research.  We had better science, and a more rapid advance of science, in the early part of the 20th century when there was no centralized government funding for science.  Einstein discovered relativity on his own time, while he was employed as a patent clerk. Where are the Einsteins of today?  They would never be able to get a university job --- Einstein's idea that time duration depended on the observer was very much opposed to the "consensus" view of the time. Einstein's idea that light was composed of particles (now called "photons") was also considered crazy by all physicists when he first published the idea.  At least then he could publish the idea.  Now a refereed journal would never even consider a paper written by a patent clerk, and all 1905 physics referees would agree that relativity and quantum mechanics were nonsense, definitely against the overwhelming consensus view.  So journals would reject Einstein's papers if he were to write them today.

Science is an economic good like everything else, and it is very bad for production of high quality goods for the government to control the means of production.  Why can't Newt Gingrich understand this?  Milton Friedman understood it, and advocated cutting off government funding for science.

We should add that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his famous farewell address as president - the "industrial-military complex" speech - also warned of the intersection between science and government.  This is what he said:

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

We thank Professor Tipler for his contribution.

December 22, 2008.      Permalink          

WATCHING A THREAT

Posted at 9:11 a.m. ET

Terrorism, and a possible attack on American soil, will be one of the major challenges confronting the new president.  The Wall Street Journal reports on concerns that some Somali immigrants may be involved in terror-related activities.

WASHINGTON -- Federal agents are investigating whether young men from Somali immigrant enclaves in the U.S. are traveling back to their parents' homeland to fight on the side of Islamist terror groups.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is following the trail of more than a dozen young men missing from Somali communities in several U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, Boston and Columbus, Ohio, according to people familiar with the probe. Counterterrorism officials in Europe and Australia also are investigating similar reports in their countries.

This is not racial profiling.  It is an investigation of missing men.  Calm down, ACLU.

Somali community leaders say the families are assisting authorities to find out how the young men, some of them immigrants and others American-born, were recruited. "Two of the mothers received phone calls from kids saying that they were in Somalia, in Mogadishu city, saying that they cannot talk and that they will see them in heaven," says Omar Jamal, executive director of Minneapolis's Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

Certainly an optimistic point of view.

The reports have raised concern among counterterrorism officials about immigrant youths being recruited by radical groups...

...E.K. Wilson, an FBI special agent in the bureau's Minneapolis office, said he couldn't confirm the existence of an investigation, but he said the FBI is aware that "a number of young Somali men from throughout the United States have left, potentially to fight with terrorist groups.

And...

U.S. counterterrorism officials have been on guard for homegrown recruitment by radical groups. Intelligence analysts from the New York Police Department, in a study of radicalization in Western Muslim communities, warned that "jihadist ideology" is "proliferating in Western democracies at a logarithmic rate."

Finally...

In a 2002 case against the so-called Lackawanna Six, federal authorities won convictions against six Americans of Yemeni descent on charges of providing support to al Qaeda. Peter Ahearn, former chief of the FBI's Buffalo, N.Y., field office and leader of the Lackawanna investigation, says investigators "have to assume the possibility" that young men who travel to Somalia to fight could become radicalized and turn against the U.S.

One of the great dangers is that terror-trained operatives can return to the U.S. and hide within their communities. 

We've noticed at Urgent Agenda that the foreign press, especially the British press, is now more active in reporting terrorist threats than is our own.  This may simply reflect the fact that we haven't had an attack since 2001, but we must resist the tendency to look away or pretend the threat is past.

December 22, 2008.      Permalink          

A BILLION HERE, A BILLION THERE - AT 7:59 A.M. ET:  From AP:  Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits in the calendar year 2007, an Associated Press analysis reveals...

...The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for 53 of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

COMMENT:   Read the story.  This is no longer the market system at work.  This is legalized thievery.  We who believe in the free enterprise system can no more accept this than we can accept excessive labor contracts.  You can't say a laboring man isn't worth thirty dollars an hour, then turn around and ignore the bank executive who's paid 50-million a year in order to "motivate" him.  Not right.  Not consistent with true conservative values.  The president of the United States is paid $400,00 a year, and there's no shortage of motivation or applicants. 

BAILOUT?  WHAT BAILOUT?

Posted at 7:55 p.m. ET

Look, it's only the taxpayers' money.  It's not as if it's real money.  Fox News reports that some of the recipients of federal bailouts are having difficulty finding out where the cash is going.  You know, it's such a burden:

WASHINGTON — It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they either can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,"' said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

We're declining to?  Is that what the man said?  The arrogance here is beyond belief.  Well, maybe it's not.  Maybe this is the kind of attitude that got us into trouble in the first place. 

Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.

"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Alabama-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.

And...

Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money — not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who don't comply.

Doesn't this give you confidence in your government?

"It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout.

But, at least for now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.

The American people may actually wake up one day and get angry.  Frankly, it would be about time.  There's a stoicism out there that's infuriating. 

Lawmakers say they want to tighten restrictions on the remaining, yet-to-be-released $350 billion block of bailout money before any more cash is handed out. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the department is trying to step up its monitoring of bank spending.

"What we've been doing here is moving, I think, with lightning speed to put necessary programs in place, to develop them, implement them, and then we need to monitor them while we're doing this," Paulson said at a recent forum in New York. "So we're building this organization as we're going."

That still doesn't tell us how the money is being spent.  A mechanism for determining that should have been in place from day one.

But Warren said she's surprised she even has to ask.

"If the appropriate restrictions were put on the money to begin with, if the appropriate transparency was in place, then we wouldn't be in a position where you're trying to call every recipient and get the basic information that should already be in public documents," she said.

And she is correct.  We may learn that a lot of the money was wasted, or that some of it went to failing executives who wanted one last fling.  This could get very bitter.  It's a story to watch, at the same time that we watch what GM and Chrysler do with their federal loan.

December 22, 2008.      Permalink          

SEAT FOR SALE IN ILLINOIS - AT 7:12 A.M. ET:  From The Los Angeles Times:  A mysterious "Individual D" in the ongoing Illinois political scandal to auction off President-elect Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat has now been identified as Raghuveer Nayak, a millionaire Chicago area Indian businessman whose voice turned up on FBI wiretaps and bugs of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

COMMENT:  There are reports that he ran a fundraiser to raise money to buy the Senate seat for Jesse Jackson Jr.  Only allegations at this state.

SUNDAY,  DECEMBER 21,  2008

THERE'S A PLACE FOR HIM, SOMEWHERE A PLACE FOR HIM - AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:  Vice President-elect Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will chair a task force charged with determining the status of the middle class — whether it's growing or shrinking, better or worse off.  It will be Biden's first major task as vice president.  "And we'll look at everything from college affordability to after-school programs — the things that affect people's daily lives," Biden said in an interview airing Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "I will be the guy honchoing that policy."

COMMENT:  Is this serious?  This requires a task force?  You can get information like that in a day.  Just assign a good labor reporter.  And wasn't Biden supposed to be the foreign-policy guy?  Why do I see Hillary's hand in this? 

CAROLINE WHO?

Posted at 9:04 a.m. ET

The most fascinating political story, rivaled only by the pain and suffering of the Illinois governor, is the attempt by Caroline Kennedy to be appointed to the U.S. Senate, succeeding Hillary Clinton, whom Caroline softly knifed in the Dem primaries.  Even in New York, this is considered a mite nervy.

Today The New York Times reports on one hurdle Caroline has to overcome - Caroline who?

Say the name Caroline Kennedy to Jensie Farrar, and she turns almost maternally protective. Ms. Farrar was married in Albany on Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the passage of 45 years has done little to dull her shock or to alter her image of the president’s only girl.

Say “Caroline Kennedy” to Bess Goden, 23, and she pauses, working quietly to exactly place it.

“I’m like, ‘Is she a Kennedy Kennedy, or is this one of the cousins?’"

It's hard to think of this daughter of an American president having name-recognition problems, but it's happening.  The passage of time has had its impact, and a Kennedy hasn't held high political office in New York since Robert F. Kennedy's assassination four decades ago.

Interviews with about 50 New Yorkers — people from upstate and across town, people of all ages and races and political persuasions — suggest that the Kennedy brand is rich with resonance. But it also provokes resentment and puzzlement, especially among younger voters, who are suspicious of dynastic politics as the Bush era ends, and are uncertain of where in the famous family tree she falls.

This is not terribly surprising.  The professional politicians pushing the Caroline candidacy know the details of Camelot.  Ordinary voters don't.  A 20-year-old college student was born in 1988, 25 years after JFK's death.  That student's parents may well have been toddlers, or not even born, at the time of the assassination. 

“I don’t know who her father is, but if you told me, I bet I would know,” said Michelle Kuhns, 21, a senior at St. John’s University in Queens who was working during her holiday break at a bagel shop on Long Island. “I’ve heard the name, yes. But that’s it.”

And...

Skeptics questioned whether Ms. Kennedy knows about places like Buffalo, Utica, or Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, and the pressures on working people in hard times. “What I want is someone who is going to cut spending and cut taxes,” said Jim Nowicki, 47, an insurance company employee in Buffalo, “someone who can bring business back here.”

But by far the largest gap between those stirred by the Kennedy mystique and those unmoved is time.

And there are other factors:

Many residents interviewed last week, as Ms. Kennedy began a series of meetings with political leaders around the state, spoke of her apparent reserve: Ms. Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president in January marked her first venture into electoral politics. Her phone call this month to Gov. David A. Paterson, who will make the Senate appointment, was her second.

Yeah.  When they start making comparisons with Sarah Palin, Caroline comes out second.

But there's political reality:

The public sentiments are unlikely to have any immediate weight on Ms. Kennedy’s candidacy because voters have no say in whether she gets the seat. Mr. Paterson will appoint a candidate of his choosing. About a dozen candidates have been mentioned, including Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, who represents parts of Manhattan and Queens, and the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. The seat will be in play in the 2010 election and again in 2012.

An appointment lasts two years.  In 2010 she'd have to run to fill out the rest of Clinton's term.  In 2012 she could run for the full term.

Fascinating story.  In the background, of course, is Hillary Clinton, who could not be pleased about someone who opposed her for president taking her place in the Senate.  We watch for some Clinton move, behind the scenes, to send Caroline back home.

December 21, 2008.      Permalink          

AFGHAN BATTLES - AT 8:23 A.M. ET:  From The Washington Post:  KABUL, Dec. 20 -- The top U.S. military officer said Saturday that the Pentagon could double the number of American forces in Afghanistan by summer to 60,000 -- the largest estimate of potential reinforcements ever publicly suggested.  Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 there.

COMMENT:  We have to assume he wouldn't have said this without approval from the Obama team.