Signing off.....for now.

There have been some personal events in my life that have recently taken their toll on me. I will not be posting with any regularity, as I have decided to focus on other things for the time being. I hope to be checking in from time to time. I expect that those who have been regularly checking in will not be reading any more, as I have found checking in just to see if someone posted something get's pretty tedious. No hard feelings.
Signing off.

I'm bankrupt of ideas

The bankruptcy bill that everyone has been talking about just passed the house and is in the Senate waiting for debate. Incidently they are waiting to debate it because they are wrapped up in the steroid bruhaha. Nice use of their time for sure.
Anyway, I have been torn by this for a while. It seems, according to Instapundit and others, that conservatives as well as liberals are against this bill, and that Republicans in the Senate and House are just feeding off the greedy credit companies. That sounds like the usual whining about some issue you don't like, blame the special interest that's pushing for the bill. It might have some reason to do with it, but is that reason enought to say that this is bad.
I had a hard time trying to find an article that wasn't of the "bad bill coming through congress" or "bill a gift to rich people" or something like that. I did find one article that tried to explain what the changes are here.
Bankruptcy has existed for a large part of American history, I suppose to avoid some sort of system of indentured servitude, or preventing European debtor's prisons from happening in America. Traditional bankruptcy is filing for Chapter 11, which allows you to not have to make full payments on your bills, but only about 70% or whatever you can pay. There is also something called chapter 7, which forgives debts and gives people a fresh start. That is the area of bankruptcy the current bill is after.
I can understand the arguments of those who don't like the bill. Credit card companies are making it all too easy these days to get credit. You've all heard the commercials on the radio: "Oh, man, I'd really like to get a car, but my credit like sucks. What's that? Even I can get credit for a new car at Credit.com? Awesome!"
One wonders if the credit companies are knowingly taking too much risk by lowering their standards as to who can pay and who can't.
But, it's also true that there needs to be some sort of overhaul of bankruptcy as it stands now. There have been 3 or 4 times as many bankruptcies in the last several years than there used to be, just 10 years ago. Statistics are deceptive regarding this issue, as there are many people who file more than once. I believe it is this kind of person who this bill is really aimed at. In that case I kind of agree.
A friend of mine has a relative who has filed more than one, treats it like a get out of jail free card. No sooner has she come out of debt by this method than card companies are sending her stuff again. She hasn't learned to stay within her means, and looks at bankruptcy as a way out.
More later.

ANWR

What's been rolling around the Senate for years has finally come to a head. The Senate voted on a budget with the ANWR oil drilling attached to it. So it might finally happen, even if Democrats are spewing vitrol over it.
I was having a beer with a good friend of mine. Simple guy who does landscaping in Seattle. He said, without any prompting from me, how disgusted he was with congress (especially his own Senator, Maria Cantwell (D)) and how much they nitpick the issue. It's pretty plain to him (and me and probably most people) that there is very little harm they can do to the area in Alaska they are working in. Ms Cantwell complains about how the area will be harmed, but has never been there herself. That pretty much describes most of the people who are opposed to this.
When pretty much everyone on Alaska is for drilling, including the native Alaskan tribe that runs the territory, I see no reason why we should be screaming about it down here in the 48.

Addie Collins

I'm watching Dennis Miller on CNBC tonight. I'm in cable heaven. Fox News. CNBC. ESPN.
Anyway...
He had a former soldier, Addie Collins, who started asking people for shoes instead of care packages when she noticed that kids over there didn't have any shoes, or adequate footwear. She thought she would get a few dozen pair.
She got 15,000. Now she has her own blog. Check it out.

Bahrain getting democratic

Some bloggers were released from prison this week, and the nation of Bahrain is beginning to show signs of human rights and democracy legislation.

The Cabinet yesterday appr­oved the Chamber of Deputies’ decision to introduce human rights and democracy as subjects at the intermediate and secondary levels and asked the Ministry of Education to consider both subjects in its curricula development plans.

As usual, Gateway Pundit is a great place to go for Middle east happenings.

Scalia vs. the rest of them

Scalia took a pretty harsh stance against what he sees as a corruption of what the court is supposed to be doing. I alluded to this in my post about Roper v. Simmons below.

Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down the juvenile death penalty, calling it the latest example of politics on the court that has made judicial nominations an increasingly bitter process.

In a 35-minute speech Monday, Scalia said unelected judges have no place deciding issues such as abortion and the death penalty. The court's 5-4 ruling March 1 to outlaw the juvenile death penalty based on "evolving notions of decency" was simply a mask for the personal policy preferences of the five-member majority, he said.

"If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again," Scalia told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. "You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility."

"Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?" he said.

Which is how I believe judges should act when deciding cases. I think the President does as well, as he has said that he wants more constructionists on the court.
One other note. Check out what the AP writer inserts at the end of the article. After Scalia leaves complaining about all the photographers, the writer ends with this:

During a speech last year in Hattiesburg, Miss., a deputy federal marshal demanded that an Associated Press reporter and another journalist erase recordings of the justice's remarks.

The justice later apologized. The government conceded that the U.S. Marshals Service violated federal law in the confrontation and said the reporters and their employers were each entitled to $1,000 in damages and attorneys' fees.

Oh my gosh. What the heck does that have to do with anything else in this article? Not a thing. It looks like the journalist, Hope Yen, wants something in the article to make Scalia look bad, like he's against freedom of the press or something, to de-legitimize what he's saying. Chalk up another example of poor journalism and poor journalistic ethics.

Tri-Met's 251 cars a day

Those of us in the Portland area are familiar with the transit systems's buses and that commonly found claim on the side that "251 cars are at home because I'm on the road."
Well, as Steven Beaven in the Oregonian reports

It's not that the math is fuzzy. Rather, the labyrinthine calculations the transit agency used to arrive at 251 don't actually determine the number of cars left in driveways and garages each day. Instead, they estimate how many car trips are saved by each bus each weekday, based on the number of times riders board TriMet buses, not counting transfers.

Got that? So that 251 number includes each trip a single person might make in a day. If you use the bus to get downtown for work, and then back again in the afternoon, that counts as two trips. So the actual number of cars not on the road would be something like 175. But does that include trips to the store, before going to work? Or does it include stops for errands on the way home?
Just something to think about while you are behind a bus in rush hour traffic today.

School tax

Portland School District is going to be out of some money, as they don't plan on renewing $33.5 million in property taxes to pay for education. So the article in the Oregonian says that this money pays for 280 teachers and other staff (I wonder how many staff and how many teachers). Yet there is this other big fat tax sitting out there that costs all of us in the county (not just the district) every year, and that's the Multnomah County Income tax (on of only about a half dozen such local income taxes in the nation). It only has one more year to collect from the peasants, so what are they going to do then? Personally, if I had to make a choice, I would want the County tax ended now and another bond passed.
Fortunately, even though the article sounds skeptical, I think that the state budget is going to help out a lot. The economy has picked up and Oregon jobs are at the same level that they were at in 2000, before the recession.

METEOR

I often say that I miss all the great geological and astronomical events here in the Northwest. Mt. Saint Helens has blown several times in the last few months and I haven't seen ONE of them live and outside. Always later on the news, or in the paper.
Well, I missed another one. But Michael Totten didn't. Apparently there was a bright and quite large meteor that came down over the Portland area this weekend. Here's the actual report.

Residents across the Northwest reported seeing the bright streak of light as it flashed across the sky. The flash lasted up to five seconds, and was captured on home video by a witness in Talent, Ore.

Scientists said the flaming object was probably a meteor, and that it likely disintegrated before any fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean.

Who reads the paper?

Via Oxblog:
THE OXBLOG GUIDE TO THE NATIONAL MEDIA:*

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like the statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country ... or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

Dueling demonstrations

In Lebanon they are having another Lebanese freedom demonstration to show opposition to they Syrian-backed government. This one seems to have dwarfed the previous pro-Syrian demostration last week. There are reports of 1.5 to 2 million people (half the population of Lebanon) gathering in Beirut.
PubliusPundit says that cities and towns are practically empty as people walk, bike, ride to the capital for the demonstration. He has LOTS on what's going on today, so I recommend visiting his looooong post.
He also has this FOX interview with Walid Phares about why the pro-Syrian demonstrations won't stop or even slow down Lebanese independence from Syria.

China flexes

China "legislators" authorized the government to use force to subdue Taiwan and prevent them from declaring independence.
This was just meant as a warning for Taiwan, so the Chinese are probably not going to act yet, but it increases tension in the area. Which, of course, poses problems for the U.S. as we have been trying to use China to influence North Korea, but are squarely against them using force against Taiwan, and have promised to intervene if China tries to invade.
Stay tuned...

Voting felons

Some are of the opinion these days that people who have served time for a felony should be able to vote, assuming of course that they are not still in prison. I think this is short sighted, as does this well written article in TCS. If you are under the impression that some felonies are not harsh enough to strip a person of his civil rights, then work on the felony system, not on the voting system.

It's fair to point out that Felony Nation may have gone too far in declaring certain crimes to be felonies. The argument for the enfranchisement of felons often seems to be a proxy fight against mandatory felony sentencing for low-level drug users. It's political poison to suggest that possession of a smidgen of cocaine ought not to be a felony; the enfranchisement of felons is much more palatable. If we're creating too many felons through the drug laws, let's re-examine the drug laws, instead of demeaning the importance of felonies themselves.

Voting is a right in this country, but obedience to the law is a requirement in this country as well. I think that felons can work their way back into the graces of the system, but they need to earn the right to vote again by being clean after they have paid their due.

One YEAR!!

I just realized that March 9th of last year is the day I started this blog. Happy birthday to me. By next year I might actually have 2 or 3 people regularly reading this site.
Technorati says that there are over 7 million blogs out there. So I'm in good company.

Canadian Timber, Eh

For the past few years there has been this running dispute between Canada and the United States over the price of imported timber from the western Canadian provinces (this problem, incidentally, does not occur in the east). The United States insists that Canadian timber companies get to cut timber off Crown (government owned land, which is most of the timberland in Canada) for pennies per hectare, whereas American timber firms must pay market price for their timberland.
This wasn't as much of a problem a decade or two ago, when timber companies still had large contracts to cut on federal forests here in the US, as they were getting a relative steal on that land too. But things have changed, and almost all the timber coming out of the U.S. is off private land and therefore is more expensive than timber coming out of Canada.
I am all for free trade, and have supported NAFTA, and now support the on-coming CAFTA (central American free trade agreement). I was very critical of Bush when he decided that we needed a tariff on Steel, as imported Asian steel was hurting out industry. But I'm not so sure the Americans are on the wrong side of this issue. It's hard to compete in a free and open market when someone's taxpayers are supporting the industry in another country. This issue has only come up as the US has stopped that practice, but I think that the U.S. has a right to protect it's timber economy until such time as Canada reforms it's timber industry.
Here was a press release today.

The Canadian government sent what it called an initial proposal to the U.S. to gauge its interest in returning to negotiations in the softwood lumber dispute. The five-page document outlined what Canada is seeking to settle the longstanding dispute. It calls for the U.S. to revoke the current countervailing and anti-dumping duty orders, and Canada then would apply an export tax on lumber shipments to the U.S. The proposal does not give a specific level for that export tax. It also calls for the U.S. to refund 100% of the duties already collected, with interest, since they were levied in May 2002. It also stipulates that for the duration of the agreement, the U.S. government would not file a CVD or AD investigation on Canadian lumber imports, and that the U.S. industry would not undertake any new cases. Under the plan, Canadian provinces would be able to reduce or eliminate the export tax if they completed specific reforms of their timber policies. A spokesman for the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports said they declined comment until they had time to study the document.

What Canada is saying here is that they are conceding that there is an issue with their industry and it needs to be reformed, but that they want the money that comes from making the situation equitable, instead of the US profiting from this.
In a way I can see their point. The Canadian government gets a pittance from timber companies (when they should be charging more for the use of their land), the timber companies benefit, but then get charged the difference in order to export to the U.S. market. The U.S. gets money that the Canadian government should have been getting if they charged market rates for use of the land.
But the question is, why don't they just reform their timber leasing practices? The press shot above kind of indicates that is where they are going, but the demand that the U.S. give back all the money they have collected so far might be asking a lot. Call it the penalty for not addressing the problem in the first place and trying to fight the U.S. on the issue for the last 4 years.

There is another issue here too. Canada has threatened to retaliate against the U.S. by boycotting certain products of ours, like wine. Rogue pundit has thoughts about this.
I mean really. The U.S.: "We feel you are unfairly helping your timber industry, so we're going to protect ours a little bit."
Canada: "Waaaaaaaaah! Oh yeah? Well, we're not buying any more of your wine. How do you like them apples, eh?"
Whatever.

Update: "The Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, the U.S. industry group that filed the duty petitions, said today that it expressed to the U.S. government its "strong support for face-to-face negotiations" with Canada. While the Coalition noted there are aspects of the proposal that they do not support, they called the proposal 'a positive step and a show of good faith.'"

If you can't fire them...

In relation to a post I made the other day about school closings in Portland, Roguepundit finds this example of government employment tradition in Oregon. He quotes from the Grants Pass Daily.

The Grants Pass School Board fired Wilson in June for threatening students and using foul language. One of his most outrageous statements was telling a female student the only way he could be fired would be if he raped her. The state Department of Education's Fair Dismissal Appeals Board didn't go that far, but did order District 7 to rehire Wilson.

The three-member board confirmed Wilson's behavior, but said it didn't justify firing. Wilson didn't really mean those threats of violence to the girls and others, the board concluded. It's disturbing the board apparently feels it's OK for the driven choir director to be verbally vulgar and belittling to his students.

He goes on to site other examples. Really, its a testimony to large beaurocracies that the unions ensure their employment. Agencies and programs continue to grow while the reason for their existance slowly ebbs away. This is occurring with the Portland School district, as Schools are closing, but teachers and administrators are not being let go.

Reading for the day

Here is a speech that Bush gave at the National Defense University. Bush keeps getting clearer and clearer that Democracy is his aim.

The advance of hope in the Middle East also requires new thinking in the capitals of great democracies -- including Washington, D.C. By now it should be clear that decades of excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability, have only led to injustice and instability and tragedy. It should be clear that the advance of democracy leads to peace, because governments that respect the rights of their people also respect the rights of their neighbors. It should be clear that the best antidote to radicalism and terror is the tolerance and hope kindled in free societies. And our duty is now clear: For the sake of our long-term security, all free nations must stand with the forces of democracy and justice that have begun to transform the Middle East.

So when are we going after Sudan? And Saudi Arabia?

My take on the Roper v. Simmons opinion

The Supreme Court issued this decision last week on the juvenile death penalty, and the decision has turned out to be quite controversial. The verdict itself was not that vital to American life, in that no rights are going to be squashed, etc. Many people, in fact, will probably agree that minors lack the legal responsibility to face such a harsh sentence, and agree with the judgment on principle.

But that’s an opinion, and it’s not based on any objective evidence. At least none offered by this verdict.

Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for the case, and his arguments can be summed up into three points. One is that the Eighth Amendment to the constitution bars cruel and unusual punishment, and states that "the Court must refer to “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society to determine which punishments are so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual." In other words, we determine what “cruel and unusual” is by what we think the consensus of Americans think it is.

Two is that minors are not as culpable for their actions as adults in that they display a lack of maturity and understanding of personal responsibility. Kennedy noted that the court recently declared that the death penalty was unconstitutional for a mentally retarded person convicted of a capital offense. “Mental retardation, the court said, diminishes personal culpability even if the offender can distinguish right and wrong.”

The third argument was that America is quite alone in the world (relatively) in it’s use of the death penalty. His reasoning here is “from the time of the Court’s decision in Trop, the Court has referred to the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive for its interpretation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.” He goes on to say that it didn’t help the Justices come to a decision, but only “confirmed” what they had decided.

I read the opinion, but remain unconvinced, and alarmed for a few reasons. Justice O’Connor’s dissent and Scalia’s dissent are much more convincing.

In Kennedy’s first point, that there is consensus in the US on this topic, the numbers he uses are not enough, and in other cases have not been enough. There are still 20 states that allow the execution of a minor. Hardly a consensus.

Scalia responded to this "Now the Court says that a legislative change in four states is significant enough to trigger a constitutional prohibition. It’s amazing to think that this subtle shift in numbers can take the issue entirely off the table for legislative debate."

Kennedy tries to compare the direction of change in legislative action regarding juvenile capital punishment with that of the mentally handicapped, to try and show that the nation is moving overwhelmingly toward that end. O’Connor states otherwise, in that the movement toward the latter was much more evident, and the action toward juveniles was “considerably slower.”

O’Connor points out that in this case, the defendant was well aware of consequences and had considered them when he declared to his friends, in planning the murder/burglary, that they could get away with it, as they were minors.

This is a point that is brought up much in this debate: some minors do have the understanding and sense of right and wrong enough to be responsible for their actions. Indeed many are tried as adults because of the severity of their crimes. If you are going to try someone as an adult, then treat them as an adult, with adult responsibility and culpability. Death penalty included.

It is Scalia who is much more scathing of this opinion. Especially the last point Kennedy makes, which looks to international mood and opinion. O’Connor does not mind this action, as she notes that the Court does this frequently in the cases regarding “cruel and unusual punishment.” But Scalia’s point is that the Court shouldn't be doing that anyway. After all, most of the world (outside of Europe) outlaws Abortion, but the Court wouldn’t necessarily take that view. Scalia accuses Kennedy and company of “looking over the heads of the crowd and picking out their friends.” In other words, using International opinion when it suits their personal preference. He is astounded that the Court would change its mind after only 15 years.

One more thought. Scalia made another point that the Court took the subject off the table for debate in this country based on some pretty flimsy numbers. This is the part that is disturbing to me. It seems that many people, and most people in States where the juvenile death penalty is still active, believe that there are some people who can be considered culpable, even though they are below the age of 18. Kennedy makes the case that this sentence is rarely issued to minors. This is true, but as it is true, it is the reason that I think the system works correctly. What the Court has done here is take the power of deciding, on a case by case basis, whether or not a minor is responsible enough to warrant the death penalty, from the jury. And from the legislature.

Scalia said: "(The) infrequency (of executions for under 18 murderers) is explained, we accurately said, both by the undisputed fact that a far smaller percentage of capital crimes are committed by persons under 18 than over 18, and by the fact that juries are required at sentencing to consider the offender’s youth as a mitigating factor."

Powerline responds here. John Hinderaker has an article in the Daily Standard critisizing Kennedy's decision to compare international law. I like it, but I thought Scalia's dissent was better.

Who said this...

Come on, take the challenge. Oxblog says that you won't guess who said this:

Europeans cannot criticize the United States for waging war in Iraq if they are unwilling to exhibit the moral fiber to stop genocide by acting collectively and with decisiveness...

Every day that goes by without meaningful sanctions and even military intervention in Sudan by African, European and if necessary U.N. forces is a day where hundreds of innocent civilians die and thousands are displaced from their land. Every day that goes by without action to stop the Sudan genocide is a day that the anti-Iraq war position so widely held in the rest of the world appears to be based less on principle and more on politics.

I'll give you a hint: He is a governor of a northeastern state, got slaughtered in the Democrat primaries last year, and just became top Democrat numero uno.

On a different note, why isn't this person, or anybody, arguing that we should just go into Sudan unilaterally. Would we get critisized by the EU or UN any more than we are already?

Bill Richardson

Citizen Smash has a conversation with Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico (the state I grew up in) talking to Katie Couric on the Today show. In the conversation Governor Bill sounds more like a Neo-Con then a Democrat (which he is) and praises Bush for the work he has done in the Middle east.
Bill is also known for cutting taxes in his first two years as Governor. He is also hispanic, and was a former US Congressman and Energy Secretary under Clinton. What an interestingly strong choice for President in 2008 this would be.