Category: News

The state of Illinois is going to stop paying into pension funds because it’s strapped for cash:

The Illinois Legislature on Sunday approved Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to withhold about $2 billion in payments over the next two years from the state’s public-employee pension systems to balance the state budget.

Can bankruptcy be far behind?

Let this stand as a contrast to our own governor, Matt Blunt, who has not raised taxes by shuffling budget priorities. Rod Blagjavinachek has raised taxes and cut pension funding, but he’s managing to continue spending like a drunken sailor with the captain’s credit card.

Undoubtedly, there are some people who would only knock the Illinois governor for cutting the pension payments to spend the money on fluff; undoubtedly, those people think that tax money is a renewable resource, and that there’ll always be more next year.

Admit that this photo from a Yahoo! slideshow fulfills a fantasy of ours:

Bill Clinton led from the courtroom after sentencing.

However, it’s not a jail jumpsuit, just a vivid shirt.

The headline identifies how the St. Louis Post-Dispatch leans: Illinois lawmakers pass bill that could add voters:

The Democrats who control the Illinois Legislature approved a measure Saturday that could spur higher voter registration and turnout – a move that Republicans angrily asserted was designed to stack the deck in future elections.

…

The voting registration bill, sent to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, on a House vote, would require that information about registering to vote be put in college registration documents that incoming college students receive. It would also allow online voter registration and would allow time off work in some circumstances to vote.

The measure, sponsored by Democrats, picked at a traditionally partisan sore spot. Efforts to increase voting registration are generally believed to help Democrats more than Republicans, because many of those who don’t currently vote are young, poor or members of a minority group. Republicans historically have claimed that such measures expand the opportunities for voter fraud.

Of course, those of us steeped in logic understand this is a false dilemma, as it will undoubtedly do both. It will add a small number of actual voters to the rolls who will participate in the republican democracy (who will undoubtedly vote Democrat, as do most voters who need to be coaxed out of their stupors into voting booths), but it will also allow for greater and easier fraud (who also will undoubtedly vote Democrat, as do most dead people, dogs, children, and clones).

So the Republicans want to disenfranchise the lazy, the apathetic, and the incompetent?

Well, some do. Those who favor a meritocracy.

Wow, I wrote prose like this when I was a freshman and sophomore in college:

After a lifetime voting for and working for Democratic candidates and independents, I’m finally going to make the switch and become a Republican.

The reasons are many, not the least of which is age. I turned 55 recently and, having lived more than half my life, I can’t afford to worry anymore about the other guy. It’s time for me.

As a Republican, I can now proudly — indeed, defiantly — pledge to never again vote for anyone who raises taxes for any reason. To hell with roads, bridges, schools, police and fire protection, Medicare, Social Security and regulation of the airwaves.

President Bush has promised to give me more tax cuts even though our federal government owes trillions of dollars to its creditors. But that’s someone else’s problem, not mine. Republicans are about the here and now, and I’m here now.

You might think, gentle reader, that I write prose like that some decades after college, and I wouldn’t argue with you; however, I’m not a writer paid for my commentary. Which means although we write about the same, I’m not as smart or connected as the new columnist.

He’s going in with a bang that’s determined to draw attention to his new column by pretending to be a principled reflection upons one political views. Perhaps he can immediately draw notoriety by summoning the wrath of the rightward-leaning blogosphere by mischaracterizing the Republican party and its beliefs. Ha! The joke’s on him! I am the only blogger who reads the San Francisco Chronicle, and I cannot summon a blogstorm.

UPDATE: Commenter William Squire points out that this guy has written for the San Francisco Chronicle before.

In a study that will have no impact on human wellness, researchers have discovered….well, regardless of what they’ll actually find at the end of numerous, peer-reviewed studies, we need a headline now! Induce panic with this one: WARNING: Side effects can be severe: Common drugs are seeping into our lakes, fish and water supply.

Start the lead with an anecdote to which all of our readers can relate:

It was barely a drop, but the effect of the drug was astonishing.

Pointing to a digital recording of fathead minnows gasping for breath in a milky, murky stew, researcher Rebecca Klaper said: “We had planned to keep them in there for a week, but we had to pull them the next day. They were going to die.”

Unfortunately, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (that is, conceptually, someone who guards diaries) feels its readers will identify with tiny, gasping fish. But if you don’t have someone poor or disinfranchised with which you can start an article-as-call-to-action, you must make do.

Brian J. notes that you should probably question any news story about endangered wildlife whose first source had to pull minnows out of an experiment to save their lives, but Brian J. is the callous sort who thought of his own pet cats as an insurance policy against the Y2K bug.

Let’s review the experiment:

Klaper, of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Great Lakes WATER Institute, is investigating the effects of common drugs, such as pain relievers, anti-depressants and lipid regulators, on lake fish and invertebrates. Many of these medications pass through the body, into the sewer system and out to the environment largely unaltered. And because they are designed to affect the biology of a living organism – to reduce headaches, control seizures or suppress coughs – she and other researchers think they could have an impact on fish and other wildlife.

Standing in her lab at the WATER Institute, an old tile warehouse on the banks of the Kinnickinnic River, Klaper reviewed the minnow experiment. She pointed to the fishes’ gills, which were straining open and shut in a desperate attempt to filter oxygen in the deadly murk surrounding them.

“The water was cloudy by the time we got in the next morning,” said Chris Rees, a research assistant, recalling the day after a lipid regulator was introduced into their tank.

But the milkiness wasn’t from the drug itself, Klaper said. It was the physical manifestation of the stressed and dying fish – a cloudy stew of mucous and other piscine secretions.

Minnows exposed to common pharmaceuticals within a small, closed system overwhelmed their environment with mucuous. Instead of publishing the results in a reputable journal, this story breaks in the Journal-Sentinel.

Give me a drop of Lipitor and let me cloud my office with skepticism. Even if the study bears snotty fruit, I’m of the mindset all the minnows in the world can perish if it means saving a number of human lives.

But I have priorities, anthrocentric priorities.

A new discovery on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon:

At wavelengths shorter than 5 microns, the spot is not unusually bright. The strange spectral character of this enigmatic feature has left the team with four possibilities for its source: the spot could be a surface coloration, a mountain range, a cloud, or a hot spot.

Expect hordes of developers bearing Starbucks and with their instant messanger statuses set to “Out of Office” or “Call My Cell” to arrive shortly.

(Link seen on /..)

Unrelated to the expert-predicted flu catastrophe and the problems with vaccine availability, another jury penalizes vaccinators: Teen awarded $8.5 million in vaccine case:

St. Louis jury awarded a teen $8.5 million late Thursday for injuries he said were linked to a polio vaccination 18 years ago.

The lawsuit alleged that Cortez Strong, 18, contracted polio after he received an oral vaccine as an infant. Lawyers for Strong, who lives near Tower Grove Park in St. Louis, say he has limited use of his left arm and right hand.

Strong sued American Cyanamid Co., maker of the vaccine, and Dr. Georgia Santo-Jawaid, his former pediatrician in 1999. She formerly worked with a doctors’ group in the 3900 block of South Grand Boulevard, where Strong received the second dose of medicine when he was four months old.

Another tragedy that punishes the medical industry for an unfortunate reaction to a vaccine that protected the majority of recipients. However, as these individual awards accummulate, vaccine producers won’t continue to serve the public good by providing a product that protects many and provides a jackpot for a few.

Until they’re nationalized, of course, then taxpayers can do both with the bottomless well of tax dollars.

Apparently, relegating gun possession to only lawbreakers has not made Britain safe enough. Now, doctors think that pointed kitchen knives should be banned:

A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase – and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

Personally, I favor preemptive amputation of the hands, which will prevent people from strangling or beating each other the death.

Thank goodness! It’s been a whole week since the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a story about a pit bull attack. But the drought has ended: St. Charles police kill attacking pit bull:

A St. Charles police officer shot and killed a pit bull after the dog attacked another officer Wednesday.

The officers had responded to the Travelodge Hotel in the 2700 block of Veterans Memorial Parkway to investigate a stolen car. Police say that when they located the suspect and advised him that he was under arrest, he slammed the door and began barricading himself in his hotel room. The officers were able to force themselves into the room, but the suspect resisted them, police say.

One officer fired a Taser at the suspect when the pit bull lunged at him and bit the Taser, police say. The dog continued trying to get at the officer until the other officer fired four rounds and killed it.

Of course, the officers were arresting a lawbreaker who would have no doubt had a beagle if only pit bulls were illegal.

New York City has banned almost everything else, so it’s turning to another hazardous substance that is too easily available to its irresponsible, befuddled citizens: candy.

Large mint balls, jawbreakers and other hard sweets — which can choke kids — could soon be banned for sale to children in the city.

City Council Health Committee Chairwoman Christine Quinn yesterday introduced a bill that would outlaw the sale of what she termed “dangerously sized candy” to people under 14.

She defined dangerously sized as between 3/4 of an inch and 13/4 of an inch in diameter.

FROM MY WARM, STICKY MOUTH!

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

Nature magazine, nominally a “science” publication, runs a “news feature” that is a fictional blog account of an avian flu pandemic.

Unfortunately, instead of steamy sex with disciples of the devil or nuclear weapons going off in Vegas or bacteria brought down to earth by a secret government project, we get the payoff of the United States federal government trouncing individual liberties and transnational UN organizations saving the day. A predictable plot.

The message, of course, is that the government is not spending enough money on experts who issue warnings about flu pandemics.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article that cuts to the chase:

[Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md.] said that federal spending on influenza preparedness has increased to $419 million from $40 million over the past five years but concedes he is not satisfied with the United States’ current level of readiness.

Read: he’s not satisfied with the current level of federal funding. Furthermore:

For example, even though an experimental H5N1 vaccine is being tested, the system for manufacturing it — the same system that produces millions of ordinary flu shots — is failure-prone. “Capacity needs to be built up,” Fauci said.

…

Swiss pharmaceuticals maker Roche Inc. produces the entire world supply of the drug at a single European plant. Federal authorities have been negotiating with Roche to build a Tamiflu factory in the United States.

Capacity is down, but I’m sure that’s unrelated to the chronic litigation sucking life and lucre out of vaccine makers and pharmaceutical companies and the increasing regulation.

In addition to problems with capacity, the United States has too small–according to experts– stockpile of the highly-perishable vaccines, but I’m sure that’s unrelated to states banning vaccines with the preservative thimerosal (the study of which also requires federal funding, according to experts).

Of course, pay no attention to the Illinois oversupply that occurred last year, when experts and the shrieking media ginned up predictions of a dire flu season. So the governor “did something” and contracted for vaccine–a supply that went unused and undoubtedly has been discarded by now. I’m sure that the lesson is not that “when government acts according to the experts, it wastes money.”

Ultimately, I think experts agree, we have a choice: federal funding for research funneled to transnational organizations and international conferences, or we’re going to die.

(Link to Nature seen on A Small Victory.)

Remember, El Guapo, how we spent a portion of my thirtieth birthday party lo, those many years ago, listening to official Libertarians explain why the Afghanistan invasion was really a ploy to make room for an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea?

Well, son of a buck, the pipeline’s complete, but they must have had the wrong Trilateral Commission map, because they completely missed Afghanistan:

Beginning in Azerbaijan a mostly Muslim country and a U.S. ally in the war on terrorism with troops in Iraq the underground pipeline passes through Georgia and Turkey, ending at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. It avoids going through Russia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Syria on its way to the Mediterranean.

(Link seen on Roger L. Simon. Well, not on him, but on his blog.)

A Canadian reaches The Tipping Point.

(Link seen on Rocket Jones.)

Story: Residents of trailer park are given a year to move out:

Rex Smith tore open the certified letter last weekend, read it then woke his sleeping wife, Angie.

The letter was an eviction notice ordering them and the other families in Collinsville’s Crescent Mobile Home Park to move within the year. The site would be swallowed up by a city-backed $78 million commercial development that includes a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Home Depot and other stores.

Starting off with the anecdote to humanize the tragedy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch makes this sound like another eminent domain struggle, but it’s not:

Collinsville Acquisitions recently bought the site, just off Illinois Route 157. All residents will be forced to move out by May 19 of next year. The city plans to provide up to $19 million of the project’s cost with money mainly generated from a tax-increment financing district. In a TIF district, property taxes are frozen, helping increase the land’s value and freeing up money that would otherwise be used to pay taxes.

Sounds like the owner of the mobile home park, who rented the pad to the mobile home owners, sold his property to the developers. Capitalism working, albeit marred by the whole TIF and government financing. Still, the story does not indicate it’s eminent domain, so I will save my sympathy for those driven off their land by the government, or for those trailer parks whose existence is suddenly made wrong by zoning changes or other chicanery.

On a side note, let’s examine the whole mobile home park thing. It’s the worst of all possible residence options. You own and have to maintain a domicile, but you still pay rent for location and are subject to eviction. Man, what a poor housing choice. I’ve lived in apartments, houses, and a mobile home, and I think mobile homes in rental parks surpasses even condos and co-ops because although you “own” a condo but still have to pay maintenance for common areas, the condo owner’s association cannot tell you to take your loft somewhere else.

CBS News, in its radio broadcasts and its Web site, mischaracterizes the nature of the Stem Cell bill just passed by the House of Representatives:

Ignoring President Bush’s veto threat, the House voted Tuesday to lift limits on embryonic stem cell research, a measure supporters said could accelerate cures for diseases but opponents viewed as akin to abortion.

Here’s the text:

`(a) In General- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (including any regulation or guidance), the Secretary shall conduct and support research that utilizes human embryonic stem cells in accordance with this section (regardless of the date on which the stem cells were derived from a human embryo).

`(b) Ethical Requirements- Human embryonic stem cells shall be eligible for use in any research conducted or supported by the Secretary if the cells meet each of the following:

`(a) In General- Notwithstanding any other provision
of law (including any regulation or guidance), the Secretary shall
conduct and support research that utilizes human embryonic stem cells in accordance with this section (regardless of the date on which the stem cells were derived from a human embryo).

`(b) Ethical Requirements- Human embryonic stem cells shall be eligible for use in any research conducted or supported by the Secretary if the cells meet each of the following:

`(1) The stem cells were derived from human embryos that have been donated from in vitro
fertilization clinics, were created for the purposes of fertility
treatment, and were in excess of the clinical need of the individuals
seeking such treatment.
`(2) Prior to the consideration of embryo donation and
through consultation with the individuals seeking fertility treatment,
it was determined that the embryos would never be implanted in a woman
and would otherwise be discarded.
`(3) The individuals seeking fertility treatment
donated the embryos with written informed consent and without receiving
any financial or other inducements to make the donation.
`(c) Guidelines- Not later than 60 days after the date of
the enactment of this section, the Secretary, in consultation with the
Director of NIH, shall issue final guidelines to carry out this section.

`(d) Reporting Requirements- The Secretary shall annually
prepare and submit to the appropriate committees of the Congress a
report describing the activities carried out under this section during
the preceding fiscal year, and including a description of whether and
to what extent research under subsection (a) has been conducted in
accordance with this section.’.

The limits are on government funding of stem cell research, not on stem cell research in and of itself by any party who wants to fund that research on its own–such as universities or pharma companies. However, those programs haven’t been eligible for federal government funding.

It’s unclear whether the media who report this are intentionally blurring this distinction to make the new bill into a fight for freedom against government oppression of scientific expression instead of what it is, a fight for freedom to spend government money. Perhaps the blurring is unintentional; some people in the media could very well believe there is/should be no action but government action.

Call me unconservative, but I’m not against this bill for the moral reason that groups of human cells are fully living humans who should have representation in the legislature. Instead, I oppose it for the moral reason that it’s the Federal government spending money on things the private sector should handle.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

UPDATE: Two other conservatives weigh in:

• At INDC Journal, Bill thinks President Bush’s veto would put the United States behind other countries. Kind of like how Boeing is falling behind Airbus, if you ask me, but then again, perhaps he’s right. Are universities and private sector companies out of the habit of expending their own capital on Research and Development without the government teat at which to suckle?
• At Just One Minute, the blogger/narrator agrees that the government should fund this research, but does recognize that the bill expands government programs, not curtails them.

Steve Chapman has perspective on base closings that elected officials lack:

It’s officially called the Department of Defense, but to many politicians, the label misstates its function. Judging from their reaction to proposed base closures, they’d like to rename it the Department of Jobs, Pork, Community Uplift and Incumbent Protection. That way, no one would get distracted by the petty business of protecting America.

Recently, the Pentagon released a list of proposed realignments in U.S. military facilities, from Maine to Hawaii. The plan calls for shutting 33 major installations and shrinking 29 others, which would streamline operations and save nearly $50 billion over the next 20 years.

But elected officials representing areas that would be adversely affected showed little interest in whether the changes would reduce costs, improve operations or cure cancer. They preferred to focus on the overriding issue: Their states or districts would lose federal jobs and dollars that they assumed to be a birthright.

Read the rest.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Home section story “At home with . . .Debbie Monterrey:

KMOX hired her to fill the co-host role vacated by the popular Nan Wyatt, whose murder by her husband dominated headlines for weeks.

Vacated by Nan Wyatt? Sorry, but Nan Wyatt didn’t exactly take direct action to leave the radio station. Her husband sort of vacated the co-host role when he shot Nan Wyatt.

Well, pardon me, but that is the subtext of this story:

An environmental group has filed a lawsuit to block construction of a coal-fired power plant in Southern Illinois, alleging that the project lacks a valid air permit.

In the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Benton, the Sierra Club seeks a court order requiring Houston-based EnviroPower to obtain a new air permit and install modern pollution controls before starting construction.

Might as well make it the headline.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has discovered, again, that fund raising companies that work with dubious collective organizations use the donations to pay for their expenses and pass the proceeds onto the organization for whom it’s collecting donor money. The story: Police charity renews lopsided deal with firm. The lead:

A foundation run by Missouri police chiefs has renewed its contract with a Texas-based fundraiser despite criticism that the fundraiser takes too big a share of charitable contributions earmarked for the foundation.

“It’s the best we can get. It’s the best anybody can get right now,” said Sheldon Lineback, executive director of the Missouri Police Chiefs Charitable Foundation. The foundation is based in Jefferson City but works with police departments throughout Missouri.

In an interview this year, Lineback said the foundation operated a Web-based police training program, conducted statewide training conferences and offered technical assistance to police departments. Lineback also said the foundation was a clearinghouse for homeland security equipment for police departments throughout the state.

Lineback said the contract extension with United Appeal Inc. was similar to the foundation’s past contracts with the telemarketing company. He said it called for the foundation to get about 20 percent of money raised for the charity by United Appeal while the company gets about 80 percent. Most of the money is raised by telephone solicitations.

Actually, 20% is pretty good; when I was working as a telemarketing fundraiser for the Missouri Deputy Sheriffs Association, its cut was 17%.

It sounds outrageous, but it’s really not. These fundraising companies are businesses, and they rely on the income from donations–pre-distribution–to pay all of their expenses, including rent, salaries, expensive autodial equipment, terminals for the employees, and so on. All business expenses must come from the money raised; these companies don’t have chickens in the back yard whose eggs they can sell to pay the bills.

So after all expenses are paid, the profit, if you will, goes directly to a charitable foundation of dubious merit. The Post Dispatch wouldn’t complain if a business that was doing something productive was churning all its profit into charity. Also, the Post-Dispatch favors a coerced setup wherein an entity takes money from all people, keeps a chunk of it, and then redistributes the remainder to dubious good causes–that’s government, and the Post-Dispatch wants more of it. But because this is a for-profit business, the Post-Dispatch is on its case.

No, let’s look where we should find the outrage:

Records filed with the Internal Revenue Service show that Lineback receives a salary of about $70,000 a year. Half of that comes from his work with the foundation and the other half from his work with a related group, the Missouri Police Chiefs Association.

Other members of the foundation’s board of directors include Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Chief Robert Pruett, O’Fallon Police Chief Steve Talbott, Eureka Police Chief Mike Wiegand, Cape Girardeau Police Chief Steven Strong and Columbia Police Chief Randy Boehm.

Despite the fact that the foundation’s board is made up of publicly paid officials, Lineback says the foundation meetings are not open to the public.

During the past three months, Lineback has said repeatedly that he is too busy to make public minutes of any board meetings, contracts between the foundation and United Appeal or other documents requested by the Post-Dispatch.

No, the fact that a number of law enforcement officials sit on the boards serves as the red herring. This charity is not unlike any other, paid officials or not. It doesn’t have any extra duty to dispense its records or minutes because it’s a cop charity.

However, note that it is a charity fighting transparency, and it’s a charity whose executive director makes his living by running a number of charities. So these charities take the 20% they get from telemarketing fundraisers, keep their share, and pass on the benefits to their members–not to all police, but only to members.

The telemarketing fundraiser is the tick on the leech as far as I’m concerned. I don’t support telemarketing fundraising efforts, and I don’t support charities that exist to perpetuate themselves and their fundraising efforts. But then again, I am a small-hearted, small-government kind of fellow who tries to maintain a consistency, no matter who might see that consistency and shout “Hobgoblin!” before running away.

(Added to Outside the Beltway’s Traffic Jam.)