On Pols and the Post

My response is up at TFT,

What model will work is anyone’s guess but what won’t work is blindingly obvious. The quickest way to irrelevancy for any media outlet is to engage in the petulant games that these Colorado newspapers have. If The Denver Post wants to take its internet ball and go home no one will notice and no one will care. The Denver Post will only succeed in hastening its own demise.

The newspapers don’t own the news and the sooner they figure this out the more likely it is that they’ll survive. And those that don’t learn to adapt will simply be relegated to history books and museums - relics of times past and Rockwell Americana.

Local Newspapers Attack Colorado Pols

Well now, this is interesting.

It Doesn't Snow in July - usually

Heard this story on NPR today and now I see the AP has picked it up,

Ski traffic jams on Interstate 70 are a perennial complaint from people in Denver. But the Colorado Department of Transportation says the ski jams are something of a myth and that the highway is actually more congested in summer.

The department says that traffic data show the busiest month of the year at the Eisenhower Tunnel for the past few years has been July.

But of course the number of cars isn't the only issue. It's the number of cars plus the terrible weather that makes the ski traffic so bad. If it is sunny and dry traffic moves a lot better than if it's dark and snowy.

UPDATE: Denver Post link deleted.

Joe Klein's Idiocy: Public Sector Edition

Oh for Christ's sake...

It is time to revise the public pension system. There aren't so many high-paying manufacturing jobs anymore; the relative security of government work doesn't need to be augmented by ridiculously obstruse procedures for firing incompetents or by 20-year pension packages. A nice 401k, with healthy matching funds, should be sufficient.

Where to start?

How about with the ridiculous implication that America should be in a race to the bottom in terms of job security and benefits? Apparently the fact that jobs in the private sector are inherently unstable and fail to provide an adequate pension is somehow, in Joe Klein's world, an argument against job security and pensions everywhere. In Joe Klein's world we shouldn't be finding ways to boost the American middle-class, we should be tearing down the last vestiges of the vibrant middle-class because... well, because we've lost the fight everywhere else.

Without even getting into the destructive reality of what Klein is advocating (further collapse of the middle class) one has to stand in awe at how truly fucked up this world view is. It truly is the world view of someone who has lost all touch with any semblance of middle-class and working class America. It's an attitude straight out of Versailles.

Beyond the disturbing philosophy driving Klein's argument and the practical ramifications of his anti-worker stance we have the massive Constitutional issues that Klein obliviously raises. You see, the reason why we have "ridiculously obtuse procedures" for firing public employees is something we like to call Due Process. In the United States the Constitution guarantees that the government cannot deprive you of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. In the case of public employees the Supreme Court has ruled that they have a property interest in their job and so they can't be fired without due process of law. And these "ridiculously obtuse procedures" that Klein alludes to are really nothing more than simple pre-termination notice with an opportunity to respond and a post-termination appeal process. It's hardly an arduous process. In fact it's so basic that almost any worker in America would think it a matter of simple fairness and equity. But not Joe Klein! Telling an employer why you think he should be fired and giving him a chance to explain himself is simply to byzantine.

Not surprisingly Klein's snide comment about public pensions is also scattered with Constitutional pot holes. Pensions are contracts. When you go to work for the government and they agree to pay you a salary now plus a pension later in exchange for your work you've entered a legally binding contract. Again, we have a document in this country known as the Constitution and the 50 states have similar documents modeled after it. And guess what? The Constitution bars states from retroactively interfering with contracts. (If you're really interested in the inner workings of public pension law I recommend this excellent article by Minnesota Law Professor Amy Monahan)

In 3 sentences Joe Klein has proclaimed what should be "sufficient" for public employees in their jobs and their pensions based on nothing more than his own ignorance and idiocy. To hell with the Constitution, to hell with the middle-class, to hell with working America.

And all this in the context of a blog post advocating for neo-Hoover economic policies!

21 days

3 weeks from today I sit for the Colorado Bar Exam. It's been a long road to get here, I actually graduated awhile ago, and the next 3 weeks will be intense.

So don't expect to hear much from me for the next few weeks.

There He Goes Again...

Jon Chait this morning in another flailing attack on David Obey, cutely titled "Obey Pulls Off The Mask,"

Moreover, the Race to the Top program has prompted a wave of school reform across the country, making it a phenomenally cost-effective exercise. Indeed, the unhinged opposition by opponents of school reform may be the surest sign that it's working.

Let's recap...

Chait is claiming that giving out billions of dollars in exchange for school reforms, with no connection to the efficacy of those reforms, is a smashing success. He attacks anyone who dares question the Race To the Top program.

Some of us think that if the idea is to make our schools better we should look to see if these reforms actually do that.

Now, who's unhinged?

Chait on Race to the Top: Mission Accomplished!

In the middle of an overall suspect rant against David Obey TNR's Jonathan Chait throws out the following,

House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey proposes to fund money for saving teachers by cutting back funding for the Obama administration's wildly effective "Race to the Top" program, which provides incentives to states that reform their education policy.

By what measure is Race to the Top wildly successful? The purpose of Race to the Top is to incentivize liberal do-gooder reforms of our schools - and by that utterly superficial metric then I suppose it has been successful. But the program just began handing out grants in January. In less than six months time there is absolutely no way to determine that any of the reforms that state's imposed while chasing these dollars have actually improved public education in the United States.

And that's what all of these school reforms are about, isn't it?

The Looming Public Employment Crisis

The Governator has been threatening for a couple of weeks now to reduce public employee pay to minimum wage and now the courts have backed him.

California is illustrative of the looming crisis facing state and local governments. The national economy is going to tank when state and local governments lose the stimulus dollars. In Colorado we're looking at close to a billion dollar deficit in 2011/2012 out of a budget of $10 billion (down from $13 billion 2 years ago).

Tens of thousands of public employees are going to be laid off across the nation in the next year. We're already at close to 10% unemployment and we need to add 125k jobs a month just to maintain the unemployment rate. Throw those newly unemployed public employees in the mix and unemployment is going to shoot up immediately. Take those wages out of the community and watch more private businesses layoff workers and close, tax revenues will continue to plummet and then more public employee layoffs. Oh and don't forget the unemployment benefits that state's will have to try and fund.

Or if the public employees don't actually lose their jobs then, like CA, their pay will be cut so severely that they are no longer able to buy goods, buy houses and make payments on their debts. All of which further devastates local economies and tax bases.

Either way, it's a very nasty cycle.

We're headed towards a double-dip recession and no one in government seems inclined to take the drastic steps needed to avoid it. Hell, I don't think our political institutions can handle this even if Obama wanted to take action.

The Senate Byrd Defended

Dana Milbank says something that I have been thinking all week. All of this celebration of Robert Byrd's fierce defense of the Senate and its institutional prerogatives is damned depressing. I really have no opinion on Byrd as a human being or as a Senator but his colleagues' praise for Byrd's defense of a supremely dysfunctional and anti-democratic institution is tough to stomach.