Category: News

Since governments are spending so much money building/financing venues for sports teams, shouldn’t they at least learn a lesson from the experience? Apparently, the risks of a long-term, high-dollar contract elude our elected “leaders”:

A month after the deadly Minneapolis bridge collapse, Missouri lawmakers are poised to approve a massive bridge repair project that could serve as a national roadmap for renovating aging infrastructure.

Missouri plans to quadruple the pace of its bridge repairs by awarding a single, 30-year contract to fix and maintain 802 of its worst bridges.

The sheer scope and duration of the project is so unusual that Missouri lawmakers are meeting in a special session to waive conventional contractor requirements. The House passed the plan overwhelmingly. The Senate is expected to give its final approval this week.

The key to good service is to guarantee a lot of money for a really long time.

Ill. governor sues House speaker:

The arguments over a state budget are escalating again, with Governor Rod Blagojevich suing the speaker of the Illinois House.

Blagojevich is angry that Speaker Michael Madigan has defied his proclamations requiring the Legislature to meet in special session.

Illinois. Is there anything there worth emulating?

A front page article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch outlines how faith-based organizations delivered more aid to Katrina-ravaged regions than FEMA:

The scope and scale of the devastation brought by Katrina, which crashed ashore Aug. 29, 2005, underscored the crucial role religious groups play in emergency response and recovery.

The National Council of Churches estimates that church-sponsored volunteers have produced $600 billion worth of labor for the Gulf Coast. In contrast, the total amount of federal funds spent on Katrina aid as of March was $53 billion.

Lower-overhead operations driven by their own desire to help fellow man rather than their desire to keep their jobs/budget will tend to be more efficient than the government? Hah!

“There were so many things we learned,” said John Kim Cook, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. “The framework for responding to a disaster is being revised to be more inclusive of faith-based organizations to make sure (the partnership) is improved upon and enhanced for the future.”

The government needs to keep its budget and its jobs and to manage the partnership it has with church groups better.

The lessons government teaches itself never include lessening its reach or trimming its tentacles, ainna?

Pit bulls at Vick’s house face deadline:

More than 50 pit bulls seized from Michael Vick’s property face a Thursday deadline to be claimed. If no one comes forward, they could be euthanized.

Federal prosecutors filed court documents last month to condemn 53 pit bulls seized in April as part of the investigation into dogfighting on the Vick’s property. No one has claimed any of the dogs, which are being held at several unspecified shelters in eastern Virginia, the U.S. Attorney’s office said Wednesday.

What is the difference between Michael Vick (Falcons’ Vick Accused of Executing Dogs) and the city of Denver (Denver pit bull ban draws dog lovers’ ire)?

Michael Vick bought his own pit bulls and “executed” them, whereas the city of Denver seized other people’s pit bulls and “put them down” for the good of society.

Haha! No, I guess it’s not funny. It’s even less funny when you think of the lack of principles involved.

And you know what’s really cheesing me off about the dogfighting thing? It’s the perversion of the language. I mean, come on, a rape stand? That’s not the term by which you buy them in the catalog; it’s called a breeding stand, and it’s designed so that mating dogs don’t hurt each other during mating (or to hold the dog for grooming or whatnot). But the papers and the indignirati all use rape stand because rape is an automatic bad word above reproach. Like here’s Brian J. Noggle saying that rape isn’t rape when a breeding animal hasn’t given its consent to be bred.

Or Michael Vick “executing” dogs. I mean, seriously, executing them? We’ve used that term to refer to a procedural sort of killing by some sort of authority, not tossing kittens in the river. But, again, it’s an automatic bad word, worse than killing a dog, Michael Vick was executing them.

George Orwell would nod sadly but knowingly.

Watch for that warning label, coming soon thanks to this lawsuit:

A Morgantown man, his mother and his friend are suing McDonald’s for $10 million.

The man says he bit into a hamburger and had a severe allergic reaction to the cheese melted on it.

As a severely allergic man, he took every reasonable precaution to ensure his own safety:

Jeromy did his part to make it known he didn’t want cheese on the hamburgers because he is allergic, Houston said.

He told a worker through the ordering speaker and then two workers face-to-face at the pay and pick-up windows that he couldn’t eat cheese, Houston said.

“By my count, he took at least five independent steps to make sure that thing had no cheese on it,” Houston said. “And it did and almost cost him his life.”

After getting the food, the three drove to Clarksburg and started to eat the food in a darkened room where they were going to watch a movie, Houston said.

Jeromy took one bite and started having the reaction, Houston said. One of the three immediately called the McDonald’s to let restaurant employees know they had messed up the order, but had to cut the call short when Jeromy started having a bad reaction, Houston said.

That’s right, he told people he was allergic but didn’t take the precaution of actually checking his food. Afterwards, while he’s reacting, his friends call the McDonalds.

Sounds like someone is digging for some free money here.

On the other hand, here’s an encouraging sign from our health industry:

The lawsuit alleges Jeromy “was only moments from death” or serious injury by the time he reached the hospital.

. . . .
McDonald’s representatives offered to pay half of Jeromy’s medical bills — which totaled about $700. When Houston became involved, he said the company offered to pay all the medical costs.

The cost of saving someone only moments from death: $1400.

Good work, health care industry!

Prices are going up for some commodities when the supply goes down and demand remains the same or goes up:

The wholesale price of cocaine has surged since December because of a shortage of the drug in 37 U.S. cities, including Milwaukee, according to a recent announcement by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Isn’t it stunning that this happens to drugs but not to petroleum, where price increases are always the result of mere greed on the part of the oil companies?

In between the bomp-bomp-bomp-bomps of the NPR All Things Considered intro music today, they teased me that one of their upcoming stories was about the possibility of reinstituting the draft.

Oh, for Pete’s sake, I have been hearing that for the last five years. In 2003, my own grandmother expressed fear of it, sure that Bush was going to impress my younger cousins and send them to Iraq.

To heck with it; I am on the bandwagon. Let’s restore the damn thing so that I don’t have to hear horror stories about that particular monster in the closet, children voters, a whole decade.

UPDATE: Here’s the story.

And I’ve reconsidered; if we reinstitute the draft, the same people worried about it coming back would take to the streets to demand its end, again. So we might as well not if they say we’re going to.

UPDATE II: James Joyner weighs in, sort of.