Archive for May, 2012

End of the Tunnel?

7
11 months ago
by dcpetterson in
John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Retired Supreme Court Jus­tice John Paul Stevens has weighed in on the mon­u­men­tal 2010 Supreme Court rul­ing known as Cit­i­zens United. Jus­tice Stevens orig­i­nally joined the minor­ity in dis­sent. He still doesn’t approve.

It is unusual for retired Supreme Court Jus­tices to offer opin­ions on the work of their for­mer col­leagues. But Jus­tice Stevens does not appear to be shy. He even offered some thoughts on what the future might hold.

The rul­ing allows cor­po­ra­tions, unions, polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees, and wealthy indi­vid­u­als to spend unlim­ited amounts of money to sup­port or oppose can­di­dates. It over­turned a cen­tury of previously-​​settled law regard­ing cam­paign finance.

What dif­fer­ence does this rul­ing make? An excel­lent sum­mary of its effects to date can be found here, and they are stun­ning. As an exam­ple, in Mass­a­chu­setts alone,

Fast-​​forward two years and the effects of that rul­ing are impos­si­ble to miss: accord­ing to the non-​​partisan Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, spend­ing by Super PACs in the cur­rent elec­tion cycle hit a whop­ping $100 mil­lion ear­lier this month—with six months to go until Elec­tion Day. “A sin­gle super PAC, the pro-​​Mitt Rom­ney Restore Our Future, has already spent more—$44.5 million—than all out­side groups com­bined had spent by this point in 2008,” the group reports.

(more…)

Rebirther

84
11 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Arms-​​length Relationship?

Sometime’s it’s tough for a Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to fig­ure out how closely to asso­ciate with others.

Vice-​​Presidential can­di­date Sarah Palin accused Pres­i­dent Obama of “pal[ling] around with ter­ror­ists” because he had been on the board of direc­tors for the Woods Fund for a cou­ple of years that over­lapped with for­mer Weather Under­ground mem­ber (and cur­rent edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor) Bill Ayers’s term, because Ayers had donated $200 to Obama’s state sen­ate reëlec­tion cam­paign in 2001, and because one of Obama’s 2001 neigh­bor­hood cam­paign events was held at Ayers’s home. But, as far as any­one can tell (and many tried hard to find evi­dence to the con­trary) they never shared a stage together, and Obama never claimed any affil­i­a­tion with Ayers.

On the other hand, Mitt Rom­ney has spent a good amount of time on stages with Don­ald Trump. A few days ago, Trump had a fundraiser in Las Vegas for Mitt Rom­ney. On April 17, wife Ann Romney’s birth­day, he hosted another Mitt Rom­ney fundraiser at his Trump Tower home in New York. And Rom­ney has pub­licly been wel­com­ing the support.

At both events, Trump con­tin­ued to insin­u­ate that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Yes, even now. (more…)

I(’m )PO(ed)

66
11 months ago
by Monotreme in
The last time Face­book CEO Mark Zucker­berg smiled was on Fri­day May 18.

It was touted as the New New Thing. The much-​​anticipated ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing of Face­book (ticker: FB) on NASDAQ was sup­posed to be the revival of the stock mar­ket, the revival of the “pub­licly held” com­pany (even though CEO Mark Zucker­berg holds 59 per­cent of the company’s stock, and 100 per­cent of vot­ing shares), the revival of cap­i­tal­ism for a New Era.

Cal­i­for­nia had begun count­ing their antic­i­pated tax rev­enues.

It was evi­dent from the open­ing bell — or, rather, the lack of an open­ing bell — that some­thing was wrong. Sched­uled for 11 AM (EDT), the IPO open­ing was inex­plic­a­bly delayed a half-​​hour. The shares then began trad­ing briskly on record vol­ume, reach­ing an early high of $45 a share. From there, it was all downside.

The only bright spot was the record vol­ume of over 573 mil­lion shares, exceed­ing the pre­vi­ous record of 458 mil­lion set by Gen­eral Motors. Irra­tional exu­ber­ance, any­one?

Face­book share price for the last hour of trad­ing on Fri­day, May 18. Source: Guardian (UK)

Then the stock opened, and instead of soar­ing from the open­ing price of $38 up to $60 or more, as some ana­lysts had pre­dicted, an appar­ent buy order by under­writer Mor­gan Stan­ley at exactly $38 sup­ported the price for the last hour of May 18 trading.

The details of the May 18 débâ­cle are clear from the Guardian’s live­blog of the IPO.

Absent under­writer sup­port, Mon­day morn­ing, May 21, the stock tanked. The finger-​​pointing and recrim­i­na­tions, which had reached a fever pitch over the week­end, started to get really serious.

What hap­pened? (more…)

It’s Time to Inhale

352
12 months ago
by dcpetterson in
Mitt Romney in 2007 in Washington, DC at the V...
Shal­low breather

I love this coun­try. I spent my life in the pri­vate sec­tor, not in gov­ern­ment. I only spent four years as a gov­er­nor. I didn’t inhale.

—Mitt Rom­ney, Sep­tem­ber 22nd, 2011

If there was a pro­gram or agency or depart­ment that needed cut­ting, I did it… That skill I learned in the pri­vate sec­tor, and prac­ticed for four years in Mass­a­chu­setts, where by the way I served in gov­ern­ment, but I didn’t inhale. I’m still a busi­ness guy.

—Mitt Rom­ney, CPAC, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Feb­ru­ary, 2012

Mitt Rom­ney has repeat­edly used this line. He’s still using it.

On this Memo­r­ial Day, it needs to be said. This is one of the most unpa­tri­otic things we have ever heard from the mouth of a man who wants to be America’s Commander-​​in-​​Chief.

Make no mis­take. Mitt Rom­ney is com­par­ing being a pub­lic ser­vant to being a user of ille­gal drugs. It’s a slap in the face to all ded­i­cated gov­ern­ment work­ers. On this Memo­r­ial Day, it needs to be said. Mitt Romney’s laugh line is a direct insult to our men and women in uni­form. (more…)

Two Race Stories

25
12 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

I ran across two sto­ries this week involv­ing race in this coun­try, and both made me think. So I thought I’d share them with you, in the hopes that you’d have some stim­u­lat­ing thoughts as well.

First is what has hap­pened to the opin­ions of African-​​Americans in the United States with respect to same-​​sex mar­riage. A recent Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling poll shows that sup­port for same-​​sex mar­riage in Mary­land has increased by 16 points in two months, where now a major­ity sup­port it. What hap­pened dur­ing that time? Pres­i­dent Obama announced his sup­port for same-​​sex mar­riage, and then the NAACP announced their sup­port as well.

This led me to pon­der a few things. Why did it take Obama’s state­ment to change their minds? Why did it have such a dra­matic effect on the African-​​American com­mu­nity and no oth­ers? If noth­ing else, this strongly sug­gests that, not only did Obama’s state­ment not hurt him with that demo­graphic, the tail wagged the dog here. How far could the Pres­i­dent take that power?

The other race story is how badly Obama did in the West Vir­ginia and Arkansas pri­mary elec­tions. Much hay was made about the num­ber of West Vir­ginia votes received by Keith Judd, a felon serv­ing time in Texas. In terms of coun­ties car­ried, Obama did worse in Arkansas, where attor­ney John Wolfe, Jr., won about half of the square miles of the state. Could this have to do with the President’s race?

Fre­quent read­ers may recall that I have often stated that, with respect to crit­i­cism of the Pres­i­dent, I think the cries of racism are overblown. Nonethe­less, we can draw upon some exit polling from four years ago. In 2008 in West Vir­ginia, 21 per­cent of Cau­casians — more than one in five — said that the race of the can­di­date was an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. Among that group, only nine per­cent voted for Obama. Sim­i­larly, in Ken­tucky, 18 per­cent of Cau­casians said that the race was impor­tant, and again nine per­cent of them voted for Obama.

This didn’t carry into the deep South — it was not any­where near as much an effect in Mis­sis­sippi, Alabama, or Georgia…and, obvi­ously, Arkansas had too much of a home-​​state effect to see any other effect in its 2008 results — it was con­cen­trated in the Appalachian Moun­tains, which resulted it a minor reflec­tion in Indi­ana and Ohio.

It does indi­cate, then, that racism isn’t a non­is­sue. It’s less dom­i­nant than it once was — Obama’s elec­tion is evi­dence for this — but clearly it’s not gone.

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Worlds Enough, and Time

6
12 months ago
by dcpetterson in
An Orion III, Pan Am's first Space Clipper, fe...

An Orion III, Pan Am’s first Space Clip­per, fea­tured in the science-​​fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Write down this date. The human adven­ture off the Earth has begun in earnest.

In a tri­umph of free enter­prise, a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion has suc­cess­fully sent a sup­ply ship to the Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion.

We knew this day would come. In his 1968 motion pic­ture, 2001: A Space Odyssey, vision­ary film­maker Stan­ley Kubrick showed us a Pan-​​Am flight to an orbital space sta­tion. For those too young to remem­ber, back in the 1960s, Pan Amer­i­can Air­ways was a major com­mer­cial air line. Pan-​​Am ceased oper­a­tions in 1991. But before that, fol­low­ing the release of Kubrick’s movie, they had been accept­ing reser­va­tions for flights to the Moon.

The real­ity so far is much less grand, but the longest jour­neys begin with a sin­gle step. Since 2009, newly-​​appointed NASA direc­tor Charles F. Bolden Jr. has advo­cated encour­ag­ing com­mer­cial enter­prise to replace the can­celed U.S. space shut­tle pro­gram. With­out a shut­tle, Amer­ica and the world are depen­dent upon Russ­ian Soyuz space­craft to carry per­son­nel to the space sta­tion, and uncrewed Progress rock­ets for sup­plies. Rus­sia had an exclu­sive lock on flights to ISS. No more. On May 25, 2012, at 12:02 p.m. East­ern Time, a pri­vate space­craft funded by Pay­Pal bil­lion­aire Elon Musk docked with the Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion, car­ry­ing a ship­ment of sup­plies. The new Dragon space­ship from SpaceX can now sup­ple­ment Progress sup­ply flights, and, within three or four years, is expected to carry up to seven crewmem­bers at a time.

This is not the first com­mer­cial space­flight. On Octo­ber 4, 2004, the 47th anniver­sary of the first Sput­nik launch, the Ansari X Prize was won by a privately-​​designed and con­structed manned space­ship. The X Prize offered ten mil­lion dol­lars to the first non-​​governmental orga­ni­za­tion that could send a manned reuse­able craft to the edge of space, defined as an alti­tude of 100 kilo­me­ters or 60 miles — and then do it again, within the space of a few days. The win­ning craft, Space­ShipOne, was designed by leg­endary air­craft devel­oper Burt Rutan, and funded by eccen­tric bil­lion­aire Richard Bran­son, founder of the Vir­gin Group. Bran­son and Rutan have gone on to cre­ate Vir­gin Galac­tic, a com­pany that will soon be pro­vid­ing joyrides into space for a mere $100,000 or so per ticket.

We are about to step off the shores of our lit­tle world into an enor­mous ocean. Are we ready for it? (more…)

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