LOOKING AT HOW A PREVIOUS “STIMULUS” EFFORT WORKED OUT: “When Knoxville was approved to receive Empowerment Zone funding in 1999, many in the city were thrilled at the potential a windfall of $100 million could have for the city’s poor neighborhoods. A few cautioned that the city not waste the opportunity. But it was hard to imagine how that kind of cash wouldn’t make a significant difference. Now, almost 10 years later, nobody is saying the Empowerment Zone has been a booming success. Some are even disgusted with what they say has been a complete failure.” Some say it hasn’t been that bad. Read the whole thing.
Archive for 2009
February 25, 2009
JAMMIEWEARINGFOOL has the really big news of the day. But you’ll have to follow the link to find out what it is.
MISSING THE POINT? Redesigning World of Warcraft to reward “eco friendly behavior.”
BREAKING NEWS: Obama Family Decides on Portugese Water Dog.
UPDATE: Reader Kevin Greene writes: “Pfffff. They don’t buy American cars. They don’t get American dogs. What’s wrong with this picture?”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: J. STORRS HALL on the audacity of nano-hope.
A century ago, there was no air travel. The Wright brothers were in the process of demonstrating their Flyer to a still largely unbelieving world. Like nanotechnology, aviation had its biological proof-of-principle — birds — but the scientific establishment firmly rejected its possibility.
25 years later, aviation had become a military reality but, economically, had stubbornly remained a fringe or money-losing proposition. The counsels of despair would have said to forget this dream — times are bad. Face the grim reality.
Instead, Douglass Aircraft, in the depths of the Great Depression, invested in the development of the DC3, the plane that turned air travel into an economically viable proposition. This, of course, was engineering — but aeronautical engineering was at that time steeped in the culture of the dream of air travel as promulgated by the futurists.
When times are bad, people need futurists more than at other times. Bad economic times come because people have been walking in the dark, in lockstep, and hit a wall. There is a surfeit of people whose efforts the current state of knowledge cannot organize productively. The job of a futurist is to turn on the lights, to show what paths could actually lead to prosperity.
Read the whole thing.
POLITICO: Joe the Plumber laughs at Obama’s speech. “I believe he’s taking America down the wrong path.”
HOW TO MAKE YOUR. P.C. boot faster.
HMM. Hanson / Fountains of Wayne / Smashing Pumpkins / Cheap Trick Members Form a Supergroup? Yes. Yes They Do. Hanson?
UPDATE: Moe Lane is deeply disturbed. Er, I mean about this development, of course . . . .
SILICON GRAFFITI: RENDEZVOUS WITH SCARCITY.
ZOGBY/WEMEDIA POLL: “Nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) said small business and entrepreneurs will lead the U.S. to a better future, while 52% said the same of science and technology leaders. Americans are far less optimistic about the leadership of government (31%), large corporations and business leaders (21%), or traditional news media such as newspapers, television, radio, and magazines (13%).”
ILYA SOMIN on a potentially important property rights case in the Supreme Court. “In Alvarez, a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel that included Judge Richard Posner invalidated a section of the Illinois Drug Asset Forfeiture Procedure Act that allows the police to seize property that they have probable cause to believe was involved in a drug-related crime and hold onto it for up to 187 days without filing any kind of action for asset forfeiture in the courts. This rule applies even to property owned by persons who are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, and who simply found their possessions caught up in a drug investigation through no fault of their own.”
GUN RIGHTS and the rights of the disabled.
ANN ALTHOUSE ON JOSH MARSHALL, ANDREW SULLIVAN, AND BOBBY JINDAL: “There’s just something about this man that doesn’t seem right, that you don’t care to examine exactly what it is, but you know it deep down in your gut somehow. Seriously. How do you know this is not racism?”
Well, it’s hardly racist to say that his response was weak. But “instinctive revulsion?” It would certainly be racist if it were in response to Obama.
REUTERS: Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama. You know, it may just be me but it seems that Reuters is being a lot more negative toward Obama than I would have expected.
UPDATE: Reader Julian Ferry writes: “Many folks assumed Reuters was just biased against Bush and the war in Iraq. But this is evidence that the real target of their negativity is actually America itself.” Well, we’ll see.
WHO’S INSULAR NOW?
MARC DANZIGER: “In my somewhat misspent youth, I put myself in places where I often encountered stupidly aggressive people. Bars. And there’s an interesting point about aggressive people in bars; you should pay close attention to the ones who are loudly threatening to kick your ass – but you don’t need to be afraid of them. Because if they were serious, they would already be kicking your ass, not just telling you about it.”
But note what the Japanese are saying.
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Reid to Obama: Let Us Keep Earmarks!
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants the White House to tread lightly on earmarks, saying that any push by the Obama administration to clamp down on pet projects would be met with strong opposition from congressional leaders.
“We cannot let spending be done by a bunch of nameless, faceless bureaucrats,” Reid said, arguing that lawmakers are much more in tune with federal money needs for their states than agencies in Washington.
Reid’s comments came a day after President Barack Obama called for slicing the skyrocketing national debt.
Earmarking money has been the subject of increased scrutiny after the practice became the subject of high-profile corruption scandals on Capitol Hill in recent years, and led to a sweeping ethics reform law in 2007. . . . In the omnibus spending bill working its way through Congress, there are 8,570 earmarks worth $7.7 billion, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
This will be a good test of whether Obama will walk the walk, or just talk the talk.
JOHN KASS ON RICHARD DALEY: Mayor’s tirade against feds full of rich irony.
THE MARKET REACTION TO LAST NIGHT’S SPEECH looks pretty underwhelming.
UPDATE: Stocks fall as Obama fails to deliver details. “NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks fell on Wednesday as President Barack Obama’s first address to Congress shed little new light on how he plans to stabilize the economy and shore up banks, and gloomy home sales data fed the negative sentiment.”
LORIE BYRD: Whoever Kidnapped the Real Bobby Jindal Returned Him This Morning. Well, he was missed.
MORE HOMESTATE COVERAGE of Chris Dodd’s Irish “cottage.” A reader comments: “Now they might call this a cottage in Ireland, but once-upon-a-time they were known as dachas, primarily enjoyed by the same unscrupulous sorts as Dodd.”
JOEL KOTKIN on the decline of Los Angeles: “Los Angeles has fallen into a serious secular decline. This constitutes one of the most rapid – and largely unnecessary – municipal reversals in fortune in American urban history.”
