I'm posting this mostly out of a sense of balance. I've posted good things about Christie. But obviously, he's not perfect.

Over at Salon, some of the dirt.

To Christie, the main appeal of the job [of the office of freeholder] was its launching pad potential. He waged an aggressive -- and negative -- campaign; in one ad, Christie claimed that the GOP incumbents were "under investigation" for their record-keeping of closed sessions -- even though they weren't. But GOP voters bought his claim and Christie prevailed in the primary (which is tantamount to winning the general election in Morris).

As a new freeholder, Christie employed the same bull-in-a-china-shop tactics that are now making him famous as governor: grandstanding at meetings, picking fights with colleagues, and attracting outsize media attention. His brash demeanor and cockiness also made him plenty of enemies in the clubby world of Morris GOP politics. Not that Christie minded. He already had his sights set on a promotion: a seat in the state Assembly. Within months of joining the freeholder board, Christie announced his candidacy for one of two seats from the heavily Republican 25th District. It was supposed to be the next step in the up-and-comer's inevitable climb to statewide glory. Instead, it nearly destroyed him.

For the campaign, Christie again positioned himself as a reformer. Of the two seats on the ballot, one was open and the other was held by a Republican who had been placed in office months earlier by a vote of the county GOP committee. Christie portrayed that incumbent, Anthony Bucco, a former county official more than 20 years older than him, as a consummate insider, and attacked him hard.

But it was all just too much. The freeholders Christie had ousted in '94 decided to sue him for defamation over his ad -- which, it was clear by '95, had been false. The headlines were harmful, and many of the Morris Republicans Christie had alienated were happy to pile on. In this context, the attacks on Bucco, generally a well-liked figure in the Morris GOP, began to backfire. Republican voters began to see in Christie a young man in too much of a hurry. In the June '95 primary, he and his running mate were trounced by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Christie had jumped too soon -- and paid the price.

And it only got worse. The defamation suit lingered until finally Christie was forced to issue a public apology.

Another defamation was pressed against him in connection with his statements about the firing of an architect for a new county jail who was costing too much money. Christie himself sued previous opponents, too, in 1997.

Salon casts this story as a "too fast, too soon" parable explaining Christie's declared lack of current ambition for higher office.

There's additional dirt, too, at Wikipedia; the most suspicious action concerns the reward of a contract to a former US attorney colleague who had declined to prosecute Christie's brother for securities fraud. (Of course, that could just be because he wasn't guilty or not provably so.)

A real stupid thing was making Bristol-Myers-Squibb, as part of deal to avoid prosecution in a fraud case, endow a chair of business ethics at his alma mater, Seton Hall Law School. That's not really corrupt per se but it does demonstrate a serious lack of judgment. When you're making a deal, you don't select your alma mater for a special bit of favoritism. That demonstrates a sort of feudal impulse.

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (80)
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Sorry for the late posting, but real life demands kept me away from the Internet until just now. Anyway, the BLS released the unemployment rate for February this morning, announcing a rate of 8.9% (essentially the same as last month's 9.0%). While most of the indicators remained the same, there were a few bright spots:

• the number of unemployed decreased by 190K (without decreasing the size of the labor force this time!),


• the number of reluctant part-timers fell by 236K,


• private sector employment actually rose by 222K,


• state and local governments shed 30,000 jobs. (It seems they're getting the message that the federal government cannot seem to hear.).

Here's The Chart, updated with the latest. Note how the rise and fall of the data follows the arc of the "No Stimulus" curve, almost as if the economy is recovering on its own schedule without regard for federal intervention. That's a real puzzler, yessirree.

Posted by: Geoff at 01:06 PM | Comments (22)
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This is the sort of weird story where you want to find some uplifting metaphor.

I don't think there is one. He died of an "enlarged heart." I guess that's a nice metaphor, but we know that actually means it was badly-working heart.

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (19)
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Tiger Blood Icees, free admission to anyone producing a clean drug test, and Charlie Sheen's girlfriends/goddesses/whores are named honorary team captains.

Posted by: Ace at 11:49 AM | Comments (66)
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8% seems doable (at least to Obama's optimists), so that is being predicted to be the win/lose threshold.

I think there's some liberal narrative mischief in this idea. Cost says that the idea that 8% is the threshold is popping up all over the media. This may be battlefield preparation, by establishing it in the public's mind that if the unemployment rate drops to the still-hideously-high level of 8%, Obama's done his job, and deserves reelection.

They've done this before with Obama, again and again, lowering the threshold for what in the public's mind should be considered "success." Obama is the first president in history to benefit from the lax, vague, impossible to define standard of jobs lost versus jobs saved or created; every other president was judged on jobs lost versus jobs created, no "saved" category. (And even that lax standard proved too tough for Obama to succeed by: later spin had it that his job "creation" figures should be based on just on jobs created, nor jobs created or saved, but ultimately jobs funded or saved or created.)

Is this then an attempt to spin a vicious, soul-crushing unemployment rate of 8% as some kind of success for a president so if Obama reaches this relatively doable level (or anywhere near it -- I have a feeling that 8.7% will do in a pinch) he should be congratulated?

It's either that or wishful thinking on the part of his stalwarts. Or a mixture of both.

Cost plots the data and determines that in five elections where the unemployment rate was above 7% (not 8%), the incumbent party lost four out of five times. The sole winner in this group of over-7%-unemployment was Reagan in 1984, and Regan benefited from the fact that the unemployment rate was just above 7% and, critically, that the economy grew at a very-high rate of 7.2% that year -- so while the public could still feel the pain of unemployment, they were also aware that there had just been a sizable burst of GDP growth which would translate into falling unemployment shortly. (Which it did.)

If Obama's at over 8%, unless there is some Reagan-like burst of growth this year, the data suggest he's in trouble.

On the other hand, I think that the Democratic Party now consists largely of people nearly immune to economic factors -- students who get their money from their parents, the dependent poor that gets their money from government, a dependent middle-class of unionists who depend on the government to side with them in disputes with management and thus are indirectly dependent on the government for wages, and a goverment worker class, which, is a dependent middle class that is strictly dependent on the government for its wages.

The benefit of being the Party of Government is that the Party of Government can immunize its ever-growing number of dependents against the baleful effects of a recession (or depression). The Party of Government voters never face layoffs and cutbacks; only the voters of the Party of Wealth Creation are vulnerable to such cycles. And the Party of Government can always tax the Party of Wealth Creators even more heavily if it gets into a pinch.

The Party of Wealth Creators doesn't have the power to tax the party of government.

So, I don't know. Cost's analysis is interesting but I wonder if the rules haven't changed enough that a high-unemployment president can get re-elected simply because he has so many voters functioning in a parallel government-economy unaffected by changes in the real economy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (171)
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It's hard to make ends meet on that.

There is always the cry that teachers have to buy "supplies" for their students out of their own pockets. I can't help but think there's a reason for that -- that each year, a greater proportion of dollars earmarked for education goes to salaries, and is deducted from supplies.

$60,000 in actual money salary plus $41,000 per year in benefits package.

In a normal negotiation, management is a genuine adversary to the workers. Workers have a strong interest in getting the highest salaries possible, but management has a countervailing interest in keeping them lower.

This doesn't happen with the Government Worker Unions. In that situation, the money isn't even coming out of the hides of those negotiating with the workers -- the money comes from a third party, the taxpayer. So there's not a particularly strong incentive to negotiate vigorously on behalf of people who aren't even in the room.

Add to that the fact that a piece of every dollar granted the government workers is going to be paid back to those doing the "negotiating" and there's an actual incentive on the government side to increase salaries.

So both parties at the negotiation have incentives to increase salaries. The one party with an incentive to keep salaries down isn't in the room and is excluded from negotiations.

In business, if an agent of the business makes a deal which is bad for those he represents but benefits him personally via an under-the-table payment, we call this a kickback, and it's a crime of corruption.

In politics, though, it's not just legal but increasingly crucial to the Democrat Party's survival.

Corrected: The stat is about Milwaukee teachers, not Wisconsin-wide teachers, as I first wrote.

But other districts in Milwaukee county pay their teachers even more:

That was lower than eight other school districts in Milwaukee County, including Greendale, Greenfield, Shorewood, Cudahy, Fox Point, South Milwaukee, Franklin and Nicolet, which was highest at just over $103,000.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (266)
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Back in January, Captain O.P. Honors was relieved of command of the USS Enterprise just weeks before it was set to deploy in support of operations in Central Command area (Iraq/Afghanistan).

Now the other shoes have dropped and an admiral has been fired.

The chief of Fleet Forces Command brought the hammer down as hard as he could Thursday on those who helped produce or knew of the controversial “XO Movie Night” video skits aired on the carrier Enterprise from 2005 to 2007, recommending that secretarial letters of censure be issued to two admirals and two of the carrier’s former executive officers.

...The latter two officers included Capt. Owen Honors, who as XO starred in many of the videos and had risen to command the ship before he was relieved as commanding officer Jan. 4 by Adm. John Harvey, barely a week before the carrier deployed, and Capt. John Dixon, who followed Honors as XO from September 2007 through June 2009. The two admirals, Rear Adm. Larry Rice and Rear Adm. Ron Horton, commanded Enterprise consecutively from January 2005 through May 2010.

If approved by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, the letters will go into the officersÂ’ permanent files and could negatively affect their military careers.

Horton’s career dead-ended in a hurry. Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Patrick Walsh fired Horton Thursday as commander of Logistics Group, Western Pacific, based in Singapore. Horton was relieved for “loss of confidence in his ability to command,” and Walsh said he did so based on Harvey’s findings and specifically for failing to “hold himself responsible for the professional decorum of the ship … [to] provide adequate guidance and oversight; and take prudent measures to ensure compliance with Navy standards.”

...Harvey also issued non-punitive letters of caution to Vice Adm. Daniel Holloway, the current 2nd Fleet commander, and retired Rear Adm. Ray Spicer; both commanded the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group during the time the videos were shown on board. He counseled former air wing commander Rear Adm. Gregory Nosal and Rear Adm. Clifford Sharpe, then a destroyer squadron commodore.

32 other lower ranking officers and enlisted sailors were cautioned by Admiral Harvey. You can see Havey's full statement here.

If Captain Honors had to pay with his career so did the officers who supervised him and were aware of what he was doing. You simply can't protect higher ups and only penalize non-flag officers. The thing is, from my decidedly non-military service perspective, none of them should have been fired in the first place (For the opposing view read Information Dissemination, including the comments)

Were these movies in bad taste (at least in the eyes of most civilians)? Sure. But the vast majority of us have never served months on end in the middle of the ocean locked up with thousands of others in one of the most high stress environments imaginable. Context matters.

Should Honors have thought ahead to what it would have looked like had these vids gotten out? Maybe. But he had much more important things to do...like keep a 45 year old nuclear powered carrier combat ready. That's a job he did by all reports as well or better than anyone.

It strikes me this kind of post facto tut tutting about the videos is dangerous. The Navy trusted the battle group commanders and the CO of the Enterprise to do their jobs. They were on the scene and they saw what was going on and were ok with it. No one was hurt, no mission failed (quite the contrary) and no laws were broken. They made a call and leadership up the chain should have backed that call. What seeds of doubt are now planted in the minds of forward deployed commanders? What other decisions will be questioned years from now?

Oh and the Enterprise? It's deployed. It was part of the group of ships that responded to the pirate attack on a private yacht where 4 Americans were killed by pirates and is now heading towards Libya to be ready for whatever may happen there. I don't doubt the replacement CO and the crew are doing great work but there are no routine carrier deployments. Switching out COs less than two weeks before this cruise over some 4 or 5 year old comedy videos was a striking contrast in priorities.

Added thought:

I've never served in the military so I'm always a bit cautious in weighing in about things like this. That said, we always hear a lot about "civilian control" of the military. That doesn't just mean the President is Commander in Chief, it means "we the people" are in control through our elected representatives. We have a responsibility to ensure that our military reflects our values. We need to do so recognizing the limits of our individual understanding and experiences but collectively, we are responsible for the climate in which our military operates.

Personally, as I wrote in one of the posts I linked above, this is how I think the Navy should have responded.

"Yes, Captain Honors went a bit too far in trying to motivate and entertain his crew during a long and successful war patrol and we've spoken to him about that.

On the other hand, his nearly 30 years of otherwise impeccable service to this nation (list a bunch of great shit he's done), the support of so many of his superiors, peers and most impressively, men and women he has led, makes us think that on balance his talents and contributions vastly out weigh this one indiscretion.

Accordingly, Capt. Honors will continue to command USS Enterprise and the men and women he has trained with and prepared for their upcoming mission in support of our troops fighting in Afghanistan. We have every confidence that Capt. Honors has learned much from this situation and will be an even better officer and leader for it".

We hear a lot from the left about the kind of military culture they want and quite frankly they are getting it. The military, like any part of the government responds to public pressure. It's about time those of us who would rather see a different set of cultural pressures exerted speak out as well. To win any battle, you first have to show up.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:51 AM | Comments (166)
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...Old Time is still a-flying.

And you'd better make sure that you're saving your rosebuds in some highly-diversified personal accounts, because if you're depending on Social Security, you're boned.

Karl Denninger over at the Market Ticker makes the same points I've made myself time and time again: Social Security is not an asset, but a tax; there is no "Trust Fund"; and the Federal Government can stiff you on your SS benefit any time it wants to (which, the way things are going, will be sooner rather than later). Denninger explains much better than I can how and why Social Security (and Medicare to an even greater extent) is completely broken in principle.

I do disagree with Denninger's statement that "[w]e can fix Social Security in part by indexing the retirement age upward." This is not a "fix", but simply pushing the failure further on into the future. Calculations of this type depend on the idea that we can accurately predict the economic future on time-horizons of decades, which we pretty clearly cannot. Mutatis mutandis, increasing the retirement age for SS will make it solvent for a longer period of time...but only if the future unfolds exactly as we expect it to. And only if the demographic makeup of the US stays in a net-positive growth curve. And only if our GDP and inflationary pressure doesn't change dramatically. And...well, you get the point.

I know that my constant harping on Social Security and Medicare seems like beating up on the old folks for something that isn't even their fault. But my point is a) that this crisis took root many years ago when current beneficiaries had a chance to change it, but chose not to; and b) that the current system is horribly unfair to younger people who have to bear the onerous burdens of this failed system at very little (or no) benefit to themselves.

Social Security and Medicare are unjust because they lay the responsibility for the failures of previous generations on young people who had no say at all in getting these programs established. There is no "fair" way to resolve this situation -- at some point, beneficiaries are going to have to accept that the situation is untenable.

But alas...no one seems to be much interested at present in hearing the bitter truth. Denninger's piece ends with a plain statement of this fact: "Resolving this problem cannot be accomplished within the current system, and that's a fact."

So where does that leave us?

Posted by: Monty at 05:43 AM | Comments (447)
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At least one person at Washington Post has had enough of Democratic lies that claim Dems have already offered substantial budget cuts. The WaPo Fact Checker gives Democrats "Two Pinocchios" for the talking point:

This has become a constant refrain by Democrats -- that they have already gone some distance to accommodate the Republicans' efforts to cut federal spending. We already awarded Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) two Pinocchios for this claim, but the talking point keeps popping up again and again.

[...]

The 2011 fiscal year began Oct. 1, but Congress, then led by the Democrats, failed to pass any of the annual spending bills that would fund the government. Instead, lawmakers have passed a series of stopgap measures, known as continuing resolutions, based largely on 2010 spending. The most recent one was approved this week, though it also included $4 billion in cuts based on proposals in Obama's 2012 budget blueprint.

Yes, it's a bit confusing. Lawmakers mix and match the three budgets in their rhetoric faster than any three-card monte player.

When Democrats say they are meeting Republicans halfway, they are talking about "cuts" from Obama's never-enacted 2011 budget. By the White House's math, they have proposed $41 billion in cuts from the 2011 budget, plus $4 billion in the latest stopgap measure, plus $6.5 billion in unspecified cuts annnounced Thursday, for a total of $51 billion. But there was no heavy lifting involved, and certainly little discrete examination of which programs to preserve and which ones to cut. It's lot like saying you are running a 100-yard dash, but starting on the 50-yard line.

So here are the real numbers. Starting from the 2010 budget, the GOP are seeking $61 billion in cuts. The Dems, by contrast, have agreed to just over $10 billion in cuts --- the $4 billion they just had to eat because of Speaker Boehner's slick maneuvering, plus an "unspecified" $6.5 billion. That ain't halfway, and it makes Democrats liars here.

It's also not like Democrats willingly cut the $4 billion in the two-week CR. That's not really part of their offer. That's just what they had to take because they ended up with no choice. Remember, Reid's initial position was that there should be no cuts in a short-term CR.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:41 AM | Comments (76)
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Everything burns.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (130)
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