Archive for January, 2009

PJTV: Washington’s Culture of Spending. It’s free.

UPDATE: Rob “N.Z. Bear” Neppel emails: “Glenn: Maybe you might want to clarify that by ‘free’, you mean the PJTV segment? ‘Cause the culture of spending definitely has a large pricetag…” Uh, yeah. The culture of spending will bankrupt the country. “Will bankrupt?” I mean “is bankrupting.”

AND YET THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE ANTI-POLLUTION: First it Killed the Electric Car; Now CARB Goes After Plug-in Hybrids. “Last week, the East Bay Express published an article regarding the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) plans for aftermarket, plug-in hybrid conversions. Proving once again that CARB is a political machine with something more than ‘clean air’ in its agenda, the board is set to deal a punishing, bureaucratic body-blow to startup companies like 3 Prong Power and A123 Systems.”

SNOW TUBING in Gatlinburg.

A ROUNDUP OF Robot Toys.

CHRIS DODD’S STRATEGY: “Stall, and hope they forget.”

It’s been over seven months since it was revealed that Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) got a sweetheart deal on his Washington, D.C., townhouse directly from Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of troubled subprime-mortgage lender Countrywide Financial. Participating in the “Friends of Angelo” program saved Dodd about $75,000 on his mortgage, and raised more than a few eyebrows about whether Dodd should be accepting such hefty gifts from entities he’s tasked with overseeing and regulating.

Since the scandal broke last June, no action has been taken by the Senate to formally ascertain if Dodd engaged in any wrongdoing. Nor has Dodd tried to clear his name in any way. What’s troubling about Dodd’s scandal isn’t so much that it remains unresolved but that it’s a textbook example of how scandals in Washington are swept under the rug.

It has now been 189 days since Dodd promised to release his mortgage documents, but he still hasn’t done so.

And don’t forget Kent Conrad: “Senator Conrad’s role in the scandal has gone straight down the memory hole.”

WHEN SCIENCE screams.

A STIMULUS REMINDER: “Note to Obey: Hoover massively expanded government spending and signed into law a horrible protectionist piece of legislation known as Smoot-Hawley. At the same time, he used the bully pulpit to hector businesses into keeping wages and prices high which only made it harder for a puffed-up economy to go through a painful but transitory adjustment. Given what you just passed and all the anti-China rhetoric coming from the White House, what exactly are you guys planning on doing differently?”

RENAMING KNOXVILLE “Glennville.” I’m flattered, but really . . ..