the drug war on children

From ReasonTV (hat tip: Jill & Eric)...

TOP 25 Weather Events in Louisville history

The Weather Channel's TOP 25 Weather Events in the Louisville area's (recorded) history (hat tip: Bruce Neely).

1.) The 1937 Flood
3.) The 1974 tornadoes
9-11.) Local warming
12.) Local cooling
16,18.) Icestorms
20.) Windstorm (we lost our trampoline in this one!)

Congrats to KY Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY): Porker of the Month!

From ReasonTV...

Lomborg hedges his bets

I've blogged on Dr. Lomborg previously. This is a surprising turn of events-- selling more books, being newly-convinced but trying to act as if it's no big deal, or trying to hedge his bets-- from the NYT green blog:

With the publication of his 2001 book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economics professor, became a leading contrarian voice on global warming and a leading opponent of carbon reduction efforts like the Kyoto Protocol.

Mr. Lomborg did not dispute that adding greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to the atmosphere was warming the climate; rather, he argued that the vast expense of reining in emissions would far outweigh the benefit deferred by the resultant effect on global temperatures....

Yet Mr. Lomborg’s latest book, “Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits,” is unlikely to bolster his popularity among those opposed to drastic immediate action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In the book, to be published in September, he calls for $150 billion in new investment annually for clean energy development, climate engineering and climate change adaptations like building sea walls to protect low-lying areas from sea-level rise — with the money to be raised through a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions....

In an interview with The Guardian, Mr. Lomborg denied making an abrupt U-turn on climate change, arguing that he has always taken the issue seriously. He blamed the highly partisan nature of the climate debate for skewing his views. Still, over the course of the last decade, Mr. Lomborg has regularly played down the probability of catastrophic climate change any time soon...

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

After covering the Great Depression in class-- and the amazing set of bone-headed policies that extended it from a significant downturn to a staggering, more-than-a-decade-long disaster-- my students often ask whether we could have something like that again. And until recently, I had always said that I couldn't imagine us doing what it would take to cause such a calamity again.

These days, I have a different answer. The Great Recession got going-- and is being perpetuated-- by bad policies. And just when you think they might quit messing with the economy, they put their fingers back in the pie again. So, who knows...

The Great Recession opened with an assortment of housing policies over a few administrations, causing a housing bubble. The backdrop included two pricey wars-- one of which shouldn't have happened and one of which should have been much shorter-- as well as President Bush and his Republican Congress passing a dog's breakfast of tax cuts and pursuing massive deficit spending in all realms of government activity.

Under Obama, we've had amazing government spending and debt (including more, futile attempts at "stimulus"), policies that cause higher costs for business (see: health care), and probably worst of all, the inject of tremendous uncertainty into the business decisions that would routinely bring an economy out of a recession (see: tax policy, banking regs, environmental regs). Bush should have known better. Obama didn't know better-- and doesn't seem smart enough to learn the obvious lessons.

Bottom line: It will be, at least, another long 6-9 months. If they keep this up, it could be a long decade.

Why this post today? It's the intro to my review of Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man-- a helpful book for understanding The Great Depression-- and to some extent, The Great Recession. I had heard about it for some time, finally got around to reading it, and now, am finally getting around to blogging about it.

I knew the biggest pieces of the Hoover/FDR policy blunders puzzle: the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, four tax increases (including a new tax on labor...brilliant!), and a marked decrease in the money supply under the Fed's passive hand.

Even more important: a variety of policies to keep prices and wages higher-- the inauguration of wage/price floors (including the Supreme Court case against the Schechters for their LOW prices [chapter 8]), the use of "moral suasion" where Hoover persuaded industry to keep wages higher, assorted policies to make farm products and food more expensive (Shlaes notes the pig slaughter/destruction of 1933 to keep pork prices higher; p. 168); and legislation that dramatically strengthened unions and enhanced their bargaining power.

The irony is that we're told that markets could not adjust, but somehow, the same people fail to mention that government was doing everything it could to keep prices and wages from adjusting downward-- exactly what's needed to deal with a recession!

As an aside, it's interesting that Hoover and FDR are so similar to Bush and FDR. Hoover and Bush both have reputations as free-market when they were, in fact, strongly interventionist. And both were modest versions of-- but quite similar to-- what followed. The biggest differences are that:

1.) FDR had a smaller government with which to work, allowing him to try far more intervention and experimentation (the federal government was less than 2% of GDP and smaller than state and local governments [p. 20]; within a year, FDR added 10K pages to the 2,735 pages of federal statute law [p. 202] and increased the staff at the IRS by 45% [p. 205]);

2.) there is not nearly the sense of emergency about today's economy; and

3.) people have (justifiably) less faith in government's ability to fix such things-- or much of anything.

What does Shlaes offer?

She starts with a vignette from 1937-- when it looked like the market was finally going to extricate itself from the government's death grip. But more intervention, including the amazingly stupid initiation of the payroll tax, increased unemployment back to 19%-- in the 6th year of the New Deal (what a success!)-- and driving people to wonder whether the Depression would ever end. (Again, a parallel: we have a tepid recovery-- and quite likely, a "double-dip recession"-- because of our current bone-headed policies.)

I knew about the intervention, but Shlaes describes the "experimentation" of FDR in detail (chapter 5). The most appalling example is his setting the price of gold "from his bed" by various whims: "One day he would move the price up several cents; another, a few more...One morning, FDR told his group he was thinking of raising the gold price by 21 cents. Why that figure? his entourage asked. 'It's a lucky number,' Roosevelt said." (p. 147-148)

Shlaes also depicts the blooming of special interest groups-- and the President's able use of them for political purposes. This emergence makes sense in light of the marked growth of government in this period-- since interest groups enjoy concentrated benefits at the expense of diffuse costs imposed on the general public.

This also relates to the irony and perversion that gives the books its title: "The Forgotten Man". Originally, the term was crafted by William Graham Sumner in 1883 to talk about the little man-- people who could be overlooked or forgotten. In modern political terms, this would refer to those in the general public, who lack political power-- and are likely to be (and are) overlooked by politicians. We see this in a range of unjust policies today. Oddly, FDR and his crew re-worked the term to refer to those in interest groups-- those who had been forgotten (supposedly) and needed to be empowered by the federal government. The fact that their empowerment would come out of the pockets of the (true) forgotten men was never mentioned.

Three little things on FDR to wrap up:

1.) Shlaes describes his efforts to "pack" the Supreme Court-- to subvert the Constitutional safeguards which limited his political efforts. In the run-up to the more aggressive part of that campaign, FDR publicly dissed the Court in a manner reminiscent of President Obama's recent snub in his State of the Union speech. In a speech at Harvard (the alma mater of two of his political enemies), "Roosevelt chose to omit the traditional acknowledgment of the host in his salutation. The audience was shocked, but Roosevelt enjoyed himself." (p. 280) In the margin, I wrote the word "ass".

2.) FDR beefed up tax compliance efforts, but was a hypocrite: "Roosevelt also set out to prove that the intention of taxpayers who failed to complete complex returns correctly was malign: where there was ambiguity, taxpayers ought to be presumed guilty. The was especially disingenuous of the president, for Roosevelt himself would submit an ambiguous tax return for the year 1937." (p. 312)

3.) I have sometimes compared FDR to Reagan in leadership ability: coming to the presidency at a challenging time and moving the country forward-- or at least, leading. Of course, their policies were quite different. But even their styles and dispositions were different: Roosevelt prophesied economic gloom and doom-- whereas Reagan prophesied a hopeful future. I had always pictured Roosevelt as Reagan's parallel in this regard, but apparently, that's not the case.

For those interested in public policy, Shlaes' effort is a must-read. If you're not sure whether you'd be interested, pick it up in a bookstore and read the summary on p. 391-395. If you like that, you'll enjoy the book.

three books: Forgotten God, Paradox of Choice, Seabiscuit

Francis Chan's Forgotten God is a cousin of his more famous book, Crazy Love. FG is a light read on a very important topic: Holy Spirit. For those who are already familiar with what the Bible says about Holy Spirit, there is little new, but it's a nice review. If you're not familiar with the topic, I'd recommend two stronger books: Watchman Nee's Normal Christian Life or Ian Thomas' Saving Life of Christ. For believers who are unfamiliar with this topic, any of these books can awaken, inform, and empower.

David Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice is another easy read-- a provocative look at the intersection of economics and psychology. From another angle, it is an exploration of the limits of standard economic modeling of choice and mutually beneficial trade. Schwartz extends the important concepts of search and transaction costs-- to recognize that more choice can, in fact, be harmful. This is especially true in some contexts and for some types of people. If you're interested in the social science aspects of economics-- or on a personal level, if you find more choices to be frustrating-- then I would strongly recommend this book.

Finally, I really enjoyed Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit. I didn't expect much from a book about a horse and horse racing. But it was fun to read, especially in its character development (two jockeys, owner, trainer, and a few horses); informative and accessible to a layperson (I don't know dink about horses); effective at putting you into the historical context of the story; and even tense at times (as you were rooting for the horse or the people in the story). I haven't seen the movie yet, but am looking forward to that too!

What did you think of these three?

it really has been hot in Louisville-- we lead the nation this summer...

In days with above-normal temperatures.

Here's the story from Chris Quay in the C-J...

Louisville has had more days above-normal temperatures than any other city in the country since June 1, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

There had been a total of 80 days with above average temperatures through Tuesday — 29 in June; 27 in July; and every day so far this month — said Mike Crow, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Thursday’s forecast for a high of 83 degrees was expected to be the first day with below-normal temperatures this month....

Memphis, Tenn., came in second in the national comparison...Atlanta was third with 69 days...followed by Raleigh, N.C., New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City and Philadelphia...

Bob Russell on producing workers for the harvest

Bob's excellent sermon from last weekend...

He delivered a sobering (and startling?) kick-in-the-shorts to Christian Academy (CAL). He said that they only generate one or two graduates who plan to attend Bible College or Seminary. That seems extraordinary. But if true, it says something...

A cool story at the end about Dr. John Baptist and his influence through Constantine somebody-- because "one man put down his newspaper".

I wonder how mega-churches fit into this. On the one hand, they help since fewer professional preachers are needed. (Even so, just as many professional or lay pastors and ministers are necessary.) On the other hand, in the pursuit of excellent, an unfortunate downside is that it promotes a star mentality-- and an implicit belief that only the excellent need apply.

Ironically, Bob has talked about the opportunities afforded to him in a small high school. He was both the starting point guard and starting quarterback-- things he would not have been qualified to do in a larger school, but experiences that positively impacted the rest of his life and ministry. The same holds true with churches. If (and only if) all things are equal, then more smaller churches will provide more ops than fewer larger churches.

Enjoy the sermon!

everybody's an economist (or at least a comedian)

This goes for Micro too, by the way...

From GraphJam...

letter to the editor in the C-J on SS

The C-J published my letter to the editor yesterday...

The solvency of Social Security is a legitimate but exaggerated concern (Dreier and Cohen, Sunday's Forum). The larger and usually overlooked issue is the oppressive burden the program places on the working poor and the middle class-- through its 12.4% payroll tax on every dollar they earn and the pathetic rate-of-return it affords them as a retirement program.

A lot of people miss this because they imagine that the firm is paying "their half" of the tax. But we don't believe that the local gas station is paying the excise taxes on gasoline. Similarly, firms shift the burden of their share of the payroll tax to workers through reduced wages and fringe benefits.

As a result, a family of four with earnings at the poverty line loses more than $2500 to the payroll tax. A middle class family earning $50,000 loses more than $6,000 to payroll taxes. The resulting rates of return are anemic-- and even negative for African-Americans, given their shorter lifespans.

One might support Social Security as a necessary evil. But avid support which ignores its staggering costs is not helpful.

ER visits increase under Massachusetts' version of ObamaCare

From Liz Kowalczyk with the Boston Globe...

The number of people visiting hospital emergency rooms has climbed in Massachusetts, despite the enactment of nearly universal health insurance that some hoped would reduce expensive emergency department use.

According to state data released last week, emergency room visits rose by 9 percent from 2004 to 2008, to about 3 million visits a year.

When the Legislature passed the insurance law in 2006, officials hoped it would increase access to primary care doctors for the uninsured, which would improve their health and lessen their reliance on emergency rooms for the flu, sprains, and other urgent care. Residents began enrolling in state-subsidized insurance plans in October 2006; everyone was required to have coverage by July 1, 2007.

But, according to a report from the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, expanded coverage may have contributed to the rise in emergency room visits, as newly insured residents entered the health care system and could not find a primary care doctor or get a last-minute appointment with their physician....

This was predicted by some economists, including John Goodman with NCPA...

two TV ads for IUS and the opening of the Sanders Financial Lab

Available at YouTube: here and here...






Here's a promo clip on YouTube on the dedication of the Sanders Financial Lab at IUS

a Democratic tax on taxes

This won't help health care costs or competition!

From the editorialists of the WSJ on "ObamaCare"...

Liberals still think the bill didn't raise taxes enough. So they've cooked up a virtuoso new scheme. A phalanx of powerful committee Chairmen—including Henry Waxman (House Commerce), Max Baucus (Senate Finance) and Sander Levin (Ways and Means)—want to tax the taxes that the health insurance industry already pays.

Among the hundreds of ObamaCare mandates is an accounting requirement that insurers spend between 80% and 85% of premium revenue on patient care, as opposed to administrative expenses, profits, etc.—known in the trade as a "medical loss ratio." Federal regulators and state insurance commissioners are now groping their way toward an explicit definition of..."patient care"...

Democrats prefer an extremely narrow definition...The committee Chairmen recently wrote a letter to federal regulators meant to "clarify" their "legislative intent." They now say that when they wrote a clause "excluding Federal and State taxes and licensing or regulatory fees" from the definition of medical loss, what they really meant is that federal and state taxes should be part of it...

But insurers have little to no control over the taxes they pay, which is why they were originally deducted from the denominator. Taxes can't be sent to Washington and at the same time count as "resources" that should be devoted to patient care...

Isn't health reform grand?

putting some numbers on the colossal-spending Dems (who followed the big-spending Reps)

From the editorialists of the WSJ...

To appreciate the magnitude of this spending blowout, compare CBO's budget "baseline" estimate in January 2008 with the baseline it released Thursday. The baseline predicts future spending based on the law at the time. As the nearby chart shows, in a mere 31 months Congress has added more than $4.4 trillion to the 10-year spending baseline. The 2008 and 2009 numbers are actual spending, the others are estimates. As recently as 2005, total federal spending was only $2.47 trillion.

Keep that $4.4 trillion in mind the next time you hear Mr. Obama or Speaker Nancy Pelosi say they "inherited" this budget mess....

states try to hide budget woes (and the SEC rides to the rescue?)

From Steve Malanga in the WSJ...

Last week, however, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed fraud charges against New Jersey for misrepresenting its financial obligations, particularly its pension obligations, and misleading investors in its bonds. New York—and many other states—had better sit up and take notice...

New Jersey is an object case in how such manipulations eventually backfire. The problems go back nearly 15 years, to when the then-relatively healthy state decided to borrow $2.8 billion and stick it in its pension funds in lieu of making contributions from tax revenues. To make the gambit seem reasonable, Trenton projected unrealistic annual investment returns—between 8% and 12% per year—on the borrowed money. The maneuver temporarily made the funds seem well-off...

In 2001, when legislators wanted to further enhance rich pension benefits, they valued the state's plan at its richest point: 1999, when the system was flush with borrowing and the tech bubble hadn't yet burst. The scheme proved disastrous, of course, because the stock market has since gone sideways, and New Jersey has achieved nowhere near the returns it needed on that borrowed money.

Meanwhile, New Jersey compounded its woes with other ploys. In 2004, the state broke the cardinal rule of municipal budgeting when it borrowed nearly $2 billion to close a budget deficit, which is like borrowing on your credit card to pay off your mortgage. (The state supreme court ruled this move unconstitutional but allowed it to go forward anyway because it didn't want to "disrupt" government operations.) Over time, New Jersey's combination of overspending in its budget and underfunding of its pensions resulted in a tidal wave of tax increases and spending cuts.

Now, even if Gov. Chris Christie can solve the state's long-term, structural budget problems, New Jersey will have to find some $3 billion a year in new revenues to begin contributing again to its pensions...

study finds/claims that Indiana's Driver's Ed is not working

My first thought is that this is provided by the government, so that would be no surprise.

But the second thought is that there's selection bias here-- since those who seek driver's ed through govt schools are not a random sample from the population. It may be that those who pursue that sort of driver's ed may be more prone to accidents to start with. Unless the study accounted for this, then the inference is put into doubt.

From the AP (hat tip: Indy's TV-channel 6)...

Indiana lawmakers say the state's driver education program isn't working, citing a fractured system administered by three separate agencies and statistics that put the program's usefulness in doubt. Public affairs director Sarah Meyer of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles told a group of state lawmakers last week that a study of current drivers under 18 showed those who took driver's education had nearly four times the crashes that those who didn't take the classes had. Nearly 5 percent of the 51,000 teens who took driver's education had one or more reported accidents, compared with 1 percent of the 71,932 drivers without formal driver training.

That's a funny way to put it. Nothing is said about privately-provided driver's ed. In any case, "formal" is defined as govt-provided-- and again, given the assertion from the study, is less effective.

"Why do we even offer driver's education?" asked Rep. Phil Hinkle, R-Indianapolis, after hearing the statistics.

Now, that's a good question-- both philosophically and practically. Why not outsource this to the private sector? If we're worried about getting driver's ed to those with lower incomes, we might use vouchers instead of having the service produced and managed by the govt.

LA's $578 million school

No comment...other than noting that the capital costs, alone, are about $140,000 per student.

From the AP's Christina Hoag through YahooNews...

Next month's opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation's most expensive public school ever.

The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of "Taj Mahal" schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities....

The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation's costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School that debuted in 2009.

The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation's second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation's lowest performing.

Los Angeles is not alone, however, in building big. Some of the most expensive schools are found in low-performing districts — New York City has a $235 million campus; New Brunswick, N.J., opened a $185 million high school in January....

best horse-race call ever?

No need to watch; just listen...



UPDATE: The two horses will have a rematch this Sunday at 4:00 in the 8th race at Monmouth Park.

UPDATE #2: I just caught that the one horse's name is "MyWifeNosEverything", not "MyWifeKnowsEverything". That's a different sort of funny!

sexual sin, glorious marriages, and amazing grace/redemption

Four excellent sermons on sex-- in our most recent series-- from Kyle...

#1: "Heat. Tempted by Lust" on David & Bathsheba

#2: "Burned. Destroyed by Desire" on Amnon and Tamar

#3: "Quenched. Refreshed by Intimacy" on Song of Solomon

#4: "Shade. Revived by Grace" on forgiveness, grace, and redemption

Check 'em out!

5-hour JCPS school bus ride for a 5-year old: awesome!

Just when you think it can't get any crazier, here's Antoinette Kunz in the C-J on the suspension of two principals because of yesterday's bus snafus and in another article on the unfortunate five-year old and her parents.

The punchline: "hundreds of students didn’t get home until after 6 p.m. — with a dozen delayed as late as 9 p.m."

I've already covered the average length of JCPS bus rides.

Beyond that, JCPS likes to tell African-Americans they can't attend a school because they're black. Then there's trying to skirt the related Supreme Court decision.

Then there's the hypocrisy with concern about the environment.

update on drunk-driving Borden principal

A case from about seven weeks ago...

The update? She thinks her suspension is too long! That takes gall...

Here's the latest in a story in the C-J from Ben-Zion Hershberg...

The lawyer for suspended Borden Junior-Senior High School principal Lisa Nale said Wednesday that he and his client believe the West Clark School Board’s proposal to extend Nale’s unpaid suspension that followed her drunken driving arrest in June is “excessive.”

Shirley Nale, Lisa Nale’s mother, said she believes her daughter has strong community support to return to Borden based on a rally Tuesday in the Borden Community Park. She estimated about 175 adult and student supporters of her daughter attended the rally, where her daughter apologized for the arrest....

“We feel there’s more than grounds for termination of a principal,” Schneider said. But “that was not the intention of the board to do that” if it can come to an agreement with Nale on terms for her continued employment, he said.

ok, global warming...but caused by what?

From Daniel Devine's interview with Roy Spencer in World...

Roy W. Spencer believes in global warming. He just thinks it's the Earth's fault....In 1989 Spencer and colleague John Christy pioneered a method of measuring global atmosphere temperature using satellite microwave sensors, an achievement that earned awards from NASA and the American Meteorological Society. Today Spencer oversees a research team for an Earth-monitoring satellite from his office at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In his spare time he writes books throwing cold water on the idea that global warming is mostly caused by people.

His latest, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists, lays out Spencer's research into the effect of clouds on atmosphere temperature. Spencer became particularly interested in clouds when he learned about a key assumption climate modelers make when predicting future global warming: Warmer average temperatures will result in reduced cloud cover. What if that assumption had it backwards?...

"the disappointment of the double helix"

The tiele of a provocative piece from James LeFanu in World...

From the time of Plato onwards, the grandeur of the universe and the richness of the living world spoke of a hidden reality beyond appearances and the reach of the human mind to comprehend fully.

This is scarcely the modern view, where for science the unknown is merely the waiting-to-be-known....Still, the paradox of this most impressive of recent intellectual achievements is that it forcefully brings to our attention what we can never know...

...since the discovery in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick of the double helix, the elegant simplicity of that structure has seduced us. We see the genetic instructions strung out along its two intertwining strands, and we suppose that the biological complexities of life might be made knowable....

From the mid-1970s onwards, the massive onslaught of modern genetics has promised to do just that...But paradoxically, as we now know, the composition of those genomes has turned out to be virtually the reverse of that anticipated...

can I borrow your ladder?

From Susan Olasky in World on NeighborGoods

...a website that could make borrowing and lending stuff easier...register and list items you own that you'd be glad to lend (bicycles, power tools, lawn mowers, vacuums, etc.) and to whom (only friends, anyone, etc.). You also list things you'd like to borrow. Then you decide whether to lend the item when it's requested...

the EM-ployment rate and the depth of the Great Recession

Looking forward a few years, I'll get to teach on the Great Recession in Economics Principles classrooms. It will join the Great Depression and the 1970s stagflation / early-1980's recession as the three key macroeconomic events to be explained over the last 100 years.

Sadly, the lessons are similar to-- also thankfully, more moderate than-- those of the Great Depression. Years of monkeying around with the economy, increasing costs and uncertainty, blaming markets and capitalism while coming nowhere near allowing markets to self-correct, Keynesian subsidies, bailouts and stimuli, and so on. Ridiculous-- and horrible that Bush and now Obama are putting people through this, in their ignorance.

Here's Henry Olsen in the WSJ with another angle on this-- and a comparison of this time to the early 1980s:

Friday's grim labor report is the latest confirmation that our economy is not recovering. A loss of 131,000 jobs and a stagnant 9.5% unemployment rate are bad enough. But a deeper look—at the little-known civilian employment-population ratio—shows how hard it's going to be to pull out of our crisis, and why the Obama administration's policies are unlikely to do the job.

In contrast to the better-known unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of working-age Americans who are actively seeking jobs but do not have one, the civilian employment-population ratio measures the percentage of working-age Americans who have a job, whether they are seeking one or not....

This distinction matters because the state of an economy affects whether someone looks for a job at all. Bad times discourage potential workers from seeking jobs; boom times encourage marginal workers to seek them....

Looking at this ratio, America is suffering its largest drop since World War II. When the economy was at its Bush-era height, in 2007, a little over 63% of adult Americans had jobs. Friday's report shows that only about 58.4% do, a decline of nearly five percentage points. While the unemployment rate remains steady at 9.5%, the employment-population ratio continues to fall each month. In April it was 58.8%, in May 58.7%, and in June 58.5%....

History also delivers sobering news on how long it might take to recover our economic health. There is only one instance since World War II of the U.S economy increasing the employment-population ratio by five percentage points in a decade: the recovery that followed Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in 1983.

In the mid-1980s, the employment-population ratio recovered less than two years after hitting bottom. The momentum continued for the rest of the decade, fueled by the 1986 tax reform that lowered the top marginal income tax rate to 28%, allowing America to employ the millions of late baby boomers, women and immigrants who sought jobs. By the time the boom ended in 1990, the employment ratio had rocketed to 63% from 57%....

the 33% tax on labor: bad for workers and the economy

A helpful piece by Michael Fleischer in the WSJ on the difficulty in firms hiring-- and thus, more broadly, the economy recovering...

With unemployment just under 10% and companies sitting on their cash, you would think that sooner or later job growth would take off. I think it's going to be later—much later. Here's why.

She makes $59,000 a year—on paper. In reality, she makes only $44,000 a year because $15,000 is taken from her thanks to various deductions and taxes, all of which form the steep, sad slope between gross and net pay....

Before that money hits her bank, it is reduced by the $2,376 she pays as her share of the medical and dental insurance that my company provides. And then the government takes its due. She pays $126 for state unemployment insurance, $149 for disability insurance and $856 for Medicare. That's the small stuff. New Jersey takes $1,893 in income taxes. The federal government gets $3,661 for Social Security and another $6,250 for income tax withholding. The roughly $13,000 taken from her by various government entities means that some 22% of her gross pay goes to Washington or Trenton. She's lucky she doesn't live in New York City, where the toll would be even higher....

Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.

Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers' comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally's Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.

When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year....

Rosty dies

People forget that the amazing "Reagan tax cuts" came with a Democratically-controlled House (by a large margin)-- with a powerful (Illinois) Dan Rostenkowski at the helm of the Ways & Means Committee.

Rosty died about a week ago. Here's a wrap-up from the AP's Don Babwin (hat tip: C-J)...

As House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Rostenkowski was known as a consensus builder and a master of legislative tactics....

Rostenkowski's problems began in 1992 when a grand jury in Washington charged him with 17 counts of misusing government and campaign funds. The scandal forced him to step down as chairman and led to his 1994 defeat by Republican unknown Michael Patrick Flanagan, who became the first GOP congressman from Chicago in 35 years. It was part of a Republican sweep that returned the GOP to power in both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s. (Flanagan served just one term before being ousted by then-Democratic state Rep. Rod Blagojevich, who later became governor - and was ousted from office in his own scandal in January 2009.)

Biographer Richard Cohen wrote that Rostenkowski was "among the half dozen most influential members of Congress during the second half of the 20th century."...

Rostenkowski was a pillar of the Chicago Democratic Machine - a ward committeeman whose precinct captains were experts at getting out the vote. He once said that in Chicago politics is "a blood sport."

"We looked at politics as compromise," Rostenkowski said. "We were going to work together. We were going to get something done. We were Democrats and Republicans but we were also legislators. Politics is war today. Everybody wants to fight. Nobody wants to give in."

As chairman, Rostenkowski opposed protectionist trade legislation and played a key role in pushing through the North American Free Trade Agreement...

the NYC "mosque"

A few thoughts (updated/edited)...

-It's good to see the Left excited about property rights and local governance.

-I understand the argument on the other side. But on net, I believe Muslims have the right to build something religious there.

-Hat tip to Joe Gill: I wish that opposition to this project was consistent-- not just opposition to something "foreign", but a broader sense of something "sacred". So, for example, there would be no porn stores on/near the Ground Zero site.

-That said, Muslims should not want to build anything religious there (I Cor 10:23).

-I can't imagine members of other religions doing this.

-In countries where they govern, I wish Muslims would allow buildings for any other religion-- anywhere.

-I wish these (and other) Muslims were as passionate about condemning radicals in their religion.

-It's a side issue, but I wish Americans understood the manner in which we've provoked Muslims in the Middle East through our foreign policy. (See: Pape.)

-It's a very mixed bag to have President Obama weigh in on this local decision. There's a slight benefit to promoting reconciliation, etc. There's a cost in appearing to appease. And to his credit, Obama is willing to bear tremendous political costs to take this public position.

take the money they've altready taken from you?

The C-J editorialists confusing what's good for the individual vs. what's good for the whole.

They have some fun with Gov. Daniels' criticism of federal aid to states-- while being willing to cash the check.

Really, it's quite simple. At least if you can sleep at night, it's better to take money that the government has already taken from you-- especially if you're not in the unseemly position of lobbying to take money from other people to put in your pockets.

Most serious economists (as opposed to, say, right-wing politicians pandering to tea party fantasies) believe that increased public spending has prevented a severe crisis from becoming a catastrophe. Reductions in public funding at this delicate stage would lead to a slowdown in the private sector's recovery, and could trigger a new recessionary wave.Yes, deficits will have to be reckoned with eventually, but that's a challenge for a time when the economy is stronger. It would be a reckless gamble to start slashing now.

Oh yes, can't you tell how well the economy is working with all of the Bush/Obama stimulus?

And then, this "zinger" to finish things off:

All of which raises the question: If Mr. Daniels gets to the White House, who comes first then?

That's the good news. If one takes this as a harbinger of what his national policy would look like, then the answer is "All of us" vs. politically-connected special interest groups and games where we take money from one pocket and put it in another and imagine that we're doing good.

"investment surplus weighs heavy on economy"

From the AP's Martin Crutsinger in the C-J...

The nation is selling fewer products around the world and spending more on cheap imported goods — an imbalance that hurts the job market and means the U.S. economy is even weaker than previously thought.

The world is investing more in the U.S., spending more on relatively attractive combinations of risk and rate-of-return — an imbalance that helps the job market and means the U.S. economy is even stronger than previously thought.

President Barack Obama gave the manufacturing industry a little help Wednesday by signing legislation that would reduce and suspend tariffs on certain materials U.S. companies must import to make their products. That could make U.S. products cheaper overseas.

Awesome! Good job, Barack!

awesome! OR I luv to see the JCPS admins gettin' a beatin'

Absolutely hilarious!

In this C-J letter to the editor, Garry Reader takes JCPS to task for encouraging parents not to idle their cars while waiting for their children-- while embracing a policy of busing that cranks pollutants into the air!

Let me get this straight: The JCPS school officials say that when a parents and guardians are picking up a child at a school, they should not let the car idle while they wait. That places unnecessary pollutants in the air that could affect the children as they walk by these idling cars. But, JCPS doesn't think twice about sending students on buses miles away from their neighborhood schools. I guess buses traveling over long distances, sitting in traffic and having to make numerous stops do not add pollutants to the air. Hmmm. It sounds like these so-called educated administrators are blowing a lot of smoke.

There's even a Dear JCPS website now. Interesting!

morality coming out of the womb

From Janie Cheaney in World...

One father in our group apparently wanted to stir the pot. Early in the conversation he asked, "But how do we know what's right and wrong?"

But to parents of preschoolers, the question itself was meaningless. We all had some notion of right and wrong that we sought to inculcate in our young barbarians; the only issue was how...

New research indicates parents may have a little underlying cooperation in that quest. I mean "little" literally. "The Moral Life of Babies," appearing in The New York Times Magazine last month, outlines extensive study by Yale University researchers into the degree that right and wrong is recognized by children as young as a few months. Surprisingly or not, overwhelming evidence points to a sense of morality either inborn or developing very early...

smells like chicken...

Jeff Willhelm/The Charlotte Observer/AP

If what you're smelling while driving on North Carolina Highway 150 is making you hungry, it's no accident. Advertisers have rigged a billboard along the highway in Mooresville, N.C., to emit the smell of charcoal and pepper during morning and afternoon rush hours to entice motorists to buy steak from a nearby Bloom grocery store....believed to be the nation's first billboard advertisement to incorporate smell.

Walker on Chafets on Limbaugh

Excerpts from Jesse Walker's lengthy and very interesting review in Reason-- of Zev Chafets' "breezy biography", Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One...

...leans heavily on recent events—over a third of the book is devoted to the latest two years of Limbaugh’s life—and he is generally sympathetic, though not entirely uncritical, toward his subject. There is much more here about Limbaugh’s impact on politics than his impact on radio...doesn’t really explore Limbaugh’s status as a pop icon...

This is not the distant fandom that fuels the rise of a Ronald Reagan or an Arnold Schwarzenegger...Nor is Limbaugh’s following the type that allowed earlier generations of broadcasters to influence the public debate. It’s much more participatory than that. Limbaugh interacts directly with his audience. He doesn’t just speak but listens, and the callers don’t just listen but argue. Limbaugh is always in charge of the show, and he manipulates his medium like a master. But the intimacy of radio gives him a relationship with his followers that’s considerably different from that enjoyed by ordinary politicians and pundits.

It is effective theater, and because it is effective theater it is also effective politics....

Limbaugh pushed back against the restrictions of his format, a habit that didn’t always lead to good relations with station management. When political talk radio took off in the early ’90s, it was, in one respect at least, a throwback to the old days of freeform FM: The host was in charge....Suddenly there was more creative freedom on the AM band than on FM—a radical reversal from the hippie days....

Limbaugh’s brand of conservatism is indebted to the three-legged stool associated with his hero, Ronald Reagan: a hawkish foreign policy, business-friendly economics, and social conservatism. But he built on the Reagan legacy in two other ways, each of which played a role in the right’s changing fortunes in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

One was his fealty to the GOP...The second development was Limbaugh’s loose approach to social issues. The broadcaster is, at least nominally, a social conservative....But he hasn’t led a socially conservative life....puts much more stress on economic and foreign policy than on public morals...This doesn’t add up to a libertarian stance. If it did he’d be more concerned about the effects of the drug war (which is opposed, interestingly, by his frequent guest host Walter Williams)....

Apple's "freedom from porn"

From Megan Basham in World...

"Freedom from porn." That's how Apple CEO Steve Jobs describes his company's policy not to allow applications (apps) featuring pornographic content to run on its products. And Apple's been putting its balance sheet where its public relations is, removing approximately 5,000 apps with explicit material from the iTunes store earlier this year.

Given how ubiquitous pornography is on the internet and that other smartphone platforms offer it in abundance (not to mention the fact that users can easily jailbreak their iPhones or iPads and run whatever apps they want), the policy may be largely symbolic. But it's a symbol that's sparking condemnation from some corners...

Jobs revealed that the policy, by targeting parents, may be based as much on shrewd business sense as on moral consideration....

The biggest sign Apple's anti-porn stance may not be the retail suicide that Ad Age and The New York Times suggest it is? Microsoft is following suit....we may soon have more freedom to use technology without fear of being inundated by images that debase sexuality.

three (legal) problems with ObamaCare

From an interview with CATO's Robert Levy in Reason-- in which he makes three quick points:

1.) The Commerce Clause was never intended, and has never been used, to compel the purchase of a private product.

2.) The penalty for violating the mandate is not a tax.

3.) Even if the penalty is deemed to be a tax, the Constitution does not authorize it.

Other than that, it's on solid Constitutional ground, I guess. Haha...

On #1, Levy also notes that Congress could also force us to buy exercise equipment and diet foods.

On #2, he notes that Congress cites the Commerce Power but not the Taxing Power.

taxpayer dollars for solar panels

From the Huffington Post (hat tip: C-J)...

The government is handing out nearly $2 billion for new solar plants that President Barack Obama says will create thousands of jobs and increase the use of renewable energy sources.

Given the numbers in the article, it works out to $400,000 per job-- and an increase in the use of, apparently inefficient, renewable energy sources. On the former, he's angling for "job creation", but you can't increase taxes or debt by $2 billion-- and spend $2 billion-- to create (net) jobs.

Interestingly, only two companies will receive the money. It's funny to hear people on the Left talk about monied interests-- albeit selectively.

a "truce" on abortion?

From Joseph Bottum in First Things...

...abortion remains what it has been for more than thirty years: the signpost at the intersection of religion and American public life.

Of course, there are those who think this shouldn’t be so. Personally, I cannot see how abortion could not rank first. We eliminate 1.3 million unborn children in this country every year, a number that dwarfs, by far, the impact of every other activity with which the moral teachings of the churches might be concerned. For that matter, the story of abortion is a tale of blood and sex and power and law—I do not know what more anyone could need for public significance. The people who say they are uninterested in the issue of abortion have always seemed, to me, to be trying to suppress the imagination that most makes us human....

One person who wishes things were different is Mitch Daniels, Republican governor of Indiana and candidate for president. He has made some news for himself, among conservatives, with the successful governorship that managed to keep Indiana out of the oceans of debt that, once the recession came, swamped many other states. The coming 2012 presidential election, he says, is the most important of his lifetime—for it primarily concerns “survival issues.”

And so, he told Washington Post columnist (and former Bush speechwriter) Michael Gerson, “If there were a WMD attack, death would come to straights and gays, pro-life and pro-choice. If the country goes broke, it would ruin the American dream for everyone. We are in this together. Whatever our honest disagreements on other questions, might we set them aside long enough to do some very difficult things without which we will be a different, lesser country?”...

And blunder it was to use that word truce—for several reasons, beginning with the guilelessness of Daniels’ statement. Even if you thought it were true, why would you say it?...

It’s a pretty easy guess that calling for a truce will buy a Republican not a single vote from among that abortion-supporting...

No, we cannot halt. We cannot falter. We cannot pause. We cannot agree to wait. No truce—not now, not ever.

There is much to say here-- some of it, semantics; some of it, not.

First, although not most important, contra Bottum, this would probably be a useful political strategy-- at least in a general election, and in this economic context. Such a position will not gain-- or lose-- votes from avid pro-choice or pro-life voters. But it could be compelling to "independent" voters, especially when the economy is in such bad shape.

Second, and far more important, given the question of abortion's immorality and injustice, there is still the question of government as a means to legitimate ends. Although one can easily make a case for Christian involvement in govt here as ethical, its efficacy is more debatable. What seems beyond debate-- but often ignored-- is that abortion is more cultural/social than political.

Thus, one reason for a "truce"-- or putting it farther down the list of political issues-- is that we won't solve abortion, politically, in the coming years. What have we gotten from pro-life presidents-- aside from a little bit of the bully pulpit and court appointees? The latter would be the same under Daniels and how much difference does the former make?

Louisville's MegaCavern

From Katya Cengel in the C-J...

I didn't know we had this in Louisville. I've been to something similar in Marengo-- to play paintball. Interesting to see, but it wouldn't be worth this admission price (to me)...

...an almost 100-acre subterranean area...Located near the Louisville Zoo, Mega Cavern is one of the largest “buildings” in Kentucky. About two-thirds of the Louisville Zoo and all 10 lanes of the Watterson Expressway near Poplar Level sit above it. It is shaped like a butterfly and encompasses about 4 million square feet, 500,000 square feet of which have been developed for use as a business park.

A little over a year ago, the cavern's owners began offering tours of the developed area.

While there are only four exits, the cavern's high ceilings and open configuration keep one from feeling closed in. Aside from about 50 walls constructed for the business park, 223 huge stone pillars hold up the 26-foot-tall solid-rock ceiling with 18 to 50 feet of dirt above that.

...the temperature remains in the mid-50s to low 60s in the common area and in the low to mid-60s in the building areas. The recording that fills in where Boling leaves off touts the cavern's energy efficiency...

Since purchasing the cavern in 1989 for $1.7 million...created by a huge limestone quarry that operated in the middle of the last century...During the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early '60s, the cavern was designed to shelter 50,000 people if Soviet missiles based in Cuba were launched against the United States...In 2008, the black-tie Bourbon Ball was held in the cavern....

Post Office spiraling to its death

Another stamp price increase is in the offing...

The post office will be toast in the next decade-- or will continue to need increasingly larger subsidies-- going forward...

Here's the story from the AP...

Fighting to survive a deepening financial crisis, the U.S. Postal Service said Tuesday it wants to increase the price of first-class stamps by 2 cents -- to 46 cents -- starting in January. Other postage costs would rise as well.

The agency's persisting problem: ever-declining mail volume as people and businesses shift to the Internet and the declining economy reduces advertising mail.

Yep, higher prices will surely stem the tide of people seeking substitutes!

The post office lost $3.8 billion last year, despite cutting 40,000 full-time positions and making other reductions, and Kearney said it is facing a $7 billion loss for this year and the same for fiscal 2011, which begins in October. The rate increase would bring in $2.5 billion...

Really? Is that based on the usual static analysis of changes in tax rates, prices, etc.?

"Abba, Father" and adoption

From Russell Moore in CT...

A rough story to start:

The creepiest sound I have ever heard was nothing at all. My wife, Maria, and I stood in the hallway of an orphanage somewhere in the former Soviet Union, on the first of two trips required for our petition to adopt. Orphanage staff led us down a hallway to greet the two 1-year-olds we hoped would become our sons. The horror wasn't the squalor and the stench, although we at times stifled the urge to vomit and weep. The horror was the quiet of it all...These children did not cry, because infants eventually learn to stop crying if no one ever responds to their calls for food, for comfort, for love. No one ever responded to these children. So they stopped.

Little Sergei (now Timothy) smiled at us, dancing up and down while holding the side of his crib. Little Maxim (now Benjamin) stood straight at attention, regal and czar-like. But neither boy made a sound. We read them books filled with words they couldn't understand...But there were no cries, no squeals, no groans. Every day we left at the appointed time in the same way we had entered: in silence.

On the last day of the trip, Maria and I arrived at the moment we had dreaded since the minute we received our adoption referral. We had to tell the boys goodbye, as by law we had to return to the United States and wait for the legal paperwork to be completed before returning to pick them up for good. After hugging and kissing them, we walked out into the quiet hallway as Maria shook with tears.

And that's when we heard the scream. Little Maxim fell back in his crib and let out a guttural yell. It seemed he knew, maybe for the first time, that he would be heard. On some primal level, he knew he had a father and mother now. I will never forget how the hairs on my arms stood up as I heard the yell. I was struck, maybe for the first time, by the force of the Abba cry passages in the New Testament, ones I had memorized in Vacation Bible School. And I was surprised by how little I had gotten it until now....

Moore moves from theology to practice, before getting to this:

Little Maxim's scream changed everything—more, I think, than did the judge's verdict and the notarized paperwork. It was the moment, in his recognizing that he would be heard, that he went from being an orphan to being a son....

Then this important concept within adoption-- a frequent stumbling block for the uninitiated:

I was at first reluctant to adopt, because I assumed an adopted child would always be more distant than a child "of my own." I was wrong. And I should have known better. After all, there are no "adopted children" of God, as an ongoing category....

Moore has much more to say on this-- here and in his book on the topic. Check it out!

freedom of worship vs. freedom of religion??

From Sarah Zylstra in CT...

"Freedom of worship" has recently replaced the phrase "freedom of religion" in public pronouncements from the Obama administration. Experts are concerned that the new rhetoric may signal a policy change.

"Freedom of worship" first appeared in President Obama's November remarks at the memorial service for the victims of the Fort Hood shooting. Days later, he referred to worship rather than religion in speeches in Japan and China.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed the shift in language...

Freedom of worship means the right to pray within the confines of a place of worship or to privately believe, said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom and member of the commission. "It excludes the right to raise your children in your faith; the right to have religious literature; the right to meet with co-religionists; the right to raise funds; the right to appoint or elect your religious leaders, and to carry out charitable activities, to evangelize, [and] to have religious education or seminary training."

The State Department does acknowledge that worship is just one component of religion, said spokesperson Andy Laine. "However, the terms 'freedom of religion' and 'freedom of worship' have often been used interchangeably through U.S. history, and policymakers in this administration will sometimes do likewise."...

Christians vs. sex trafficking

From Amy Sherman in Books & Culture...

When he invited former strip club dancer Harmony Dust to address Phoenix's Bethany Bible Church, outreach pastor Brad Pellish raised a few eyebrows. But Pellish had been learning some harsh truths about the commercial sex industry in Phoenix. He thought his flock should know about the despair the women behind the Nude Girls signs felt. That they would probably be horrified to know that the average age of entry into prostitution in Phoenix is 13—and that brutal pimps forcibly kept many in this lifestyle. He wanted his church to join him on a new mission into some dark and scary places.

In August 2007, Pellish had attended the simulcast of the annual Willow Creek Leadership Summit. There he heard Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), a Christian human rights agency, talk about combating the large-scale problem of sex trafficking and forced prostitution in south Asia....

Pellish and the other pastors watched Branded, a documentary on child prostitution in Phoenix. (The title refers to the fact that many pimps use heated wires to physically mark "their" girls.) "I heard that those things Gary [Haugen] talked about were happening right here in my own city," Pellish says. "I left the meeting that day resolved that Bethany Bible Church would be involved."

Pellish designed a short preaching series called "Enough is Enough." Then-senior pastor Dave Gudgel delivered brief messages on God's heart for justice and Pellish conducted interviews with guests like Harmony Dust and Food for the Hungry's Pat McCalla, who had helped to spearhead the Branded initiative with multiple churches and public officials....

Bethany Bible decided to begin by supporting local vice squad officers. Church members were encouraged to purchase gift cards to 24-hour fast food restaurants. When the cops picked up underage girls working the streets, the girls were typically hungry. (Though they might have cash on hand, they didn't dare risk their pimp's wrath by spending their earnings on food.) So the vice cops paid out of pocket for burgers or tacos....

Crossroads Church in Cincinnati may be the best example nationwide of a church committed to the fight against human trafficking....

There's a lot more to the article-- far more than I can cite here, but if you have a heart for this injustice and are looking for ideas/resources, please check out the rest of the article.

the book of Eli

Enjoyed this movie a few weeks ago...

It has a ton of violence-- and salty language (although appropriate for the bad guys), but that's about it. If you don't mind graphic violence, then I can recommend it; if not, move along-- nothing to see here!

From Brian Godawa's review of it as his blog (hat tip: CRJ) who points to

"...a couple shots at the end seemed to be an intentional multicultural nod to Islam that seemed to work against the Christian exclusivism of the Bible: When Eli is transferring the text of the Bible to the good guys, he shaves all his hair off and dresses in what appears to be a Muslim garb. And then, the Bible that is printed is placed on a bookshelf right between a Tanakh and a Quran with other religious books, as if to say the Bible is one among other religious documents needed for civilization, including the Quran."

I'm not so sure. At the least, I think the ending is less clear than that-- and perhaps purposefully so, to promote exactly this sort of reflection.

Godawa does not bring up Mormonism. But the transmission of the book by Eli at the end-- word-for-word and in a sense, divinely inspired-- could speak to the supposed transmission process of divine revelation in both Joseph Smith's Mormon books and Muhammad's Koran.

But if one takes Eli's transmission to be a combination of spiritual disciplines and divine inspiration, then it is wholly (and beautifully) consistent with the manner in which the Christian scriptures were revealed to man through Holy Spirit.

The other key consideration is what one does with God's remarkable providence and sovereignty in bringing the Bible back to life in the movie-- a resurrection of sorts. The clear message of the movie seems to be that the Bible is, in fact, different-- and that God wants to make sure that it ends up on the shelf, where natural/man-made religions can get, easily enough, on their own.

Ogle and KCA announce next year's season

From the C-J...

Concerts by Tony Bennett, the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and others are among the biggest events slated for the Kentucky Center. At the Ogle Center, Japanese jazz pianist Hiromi and country music singer Kathy Mattea...gypsy-jazz guitarist Frank Vignola (Feb. 5) and Broadway “Phantom of the Opera” singer Franc D’Ambrosio (April 15).

More info is available at their websites-- for KCA and Ogle.

when partisanship gets in the way of peace

A strange letter to the editor of the C-J-- from James McMillin, who identifies himself with the Louisville Peace Action Community.

He takes Rand Paul to task-- which is ok in itself-- but odd in that Paul prefers a much less interventionist foreign policy than Jack Conway. You're a member of a group with Peace in the name, but support a warmonger (relatively speaking)?!

He also compares Paul to Mitch McConnell as "obstructionists" and capitalists. I don't see where Paul would be an obstructionist (probably far less than the average politician and more willing to cross partisan lines) or how McConnell is comparable to Paul on advocacy of capitalism.

At the end of the day, the policy lines are completely blurred for McMillin-- and apparently are largely unimportant-- behind the aggressive partisanship of a yellow-dog Democrat.