BACKFILL: Escort says Menendez prostitution claims were made up. The influence-peddling angle, however, remains unchanged.
Archive for 2013
March 4, 2013
LENA DUNHAM’S SEXIST CARICATURES: Pretentious, Psychotic, Pathetic or Puerile: The Boys of Girls.
FASTER, PLEASE: 3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight, and Nearing Production. Now that would be disruptive.
CHARLES GASPARINO: Why Is Chuck Schumer Ignoring Wall Street Job Losses?
It’s one thing for President Obama to attack Wall Street as the place fat cats roam free as proof, a class warrior justifying all the mainly useless banking regulations he’s imposed since the 2008 financial crisis. It’s quite another thing for New York’s elected officials to let him get away with the big lie that’s costing New Yorkers jobs and squeezing our finances.
In other words, where’s Chuck Schumer when you need him?
MIA, it turns out. Ditto for our other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Even Mayor Bloomberg’s been MIA, though these changes are hollowing out his city.
UPDATE: The Anchoress emails: “Maybe I’m paranoid, but it seems increasingly to me like they don’t think they ever need to worry about another election. All they have to do is keep the public mad at the GOP and halfway distracted/satiated, and they’ll mosey on along…..”
GREEN SCREAM: The Decay Of The Hollywood Special Effects Industry.
Related: Hollywood’s VFX Crisis. And note this:
The problem is government subsidies. A place like Vancouver might say, “Hey, if you’ve got a $100 million movie, we will pay your studio $40 million. We’ll pay 40% of your budget if you do your movie here.” When the first Harry Potter film got started, for example, Warners wanted to take advantage of the tax credits in the UK. So 75% of the work had to be done in the UK. The visual effects work on that type of film would typically have taken place in California, but instead it all went to London. For The Hobbit, the studio went to the government of New Zealand and said they were thinking of shooting it in Prague unless they got certain terms, and New Zealand changed their laws to allow that. You have companies popping up in places where they couldn’t otherwise survive, and good companies running efficiently in places without subsidies, and they can’t compete and they’re going under. It’s not survival of the fittest: it’s survival of who has the subsidy.
Any independent study I’ve ever seen says these subsidies are bad business, because for every dollar they pay out, they typically only return 70c. You have to understand that a lot of this money isn’t going back into the local economy: it’s just going to the stars and the studios back in LA.
SUFFERING FOR HIS ART: Art School Confiscates 68 Vials Of Student’s Sperm.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Ten Things Your Law Firm Boss Wants You To Know, But Isn’t Going to Tell You. The “be nice to everyone” advice is especially good, and it’s surprising how many young lawyers put on airs and treat support staff badly. Don’t do that.
I’ll add another piece of advice — if you can, give yourself slack. As an associate, I once set the firm’s internal deadline (which was basically just my deadline) for a court filing the day before the actual deadline. That turned out to save the day, and let us still file on time. Had I not done that, we would have discovered the problem at the last minute on the actual deadline, and there would, at the least, have been a lot of drama.
DEFENSIVE GUN USE: Civilian shoots would-be robber during attempted bank hold-up.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: The Shrinking Law Faculty Lateral Market. Shrinking? Last year was more like a collapse.
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: A Titanium Escape Ring. I want one! Where do I get one?
AT AMAZON, Kindle Daily Deals.
CHANGE: Ernest Moniz, MIT physicist, nominated as energy secretary. I like this bit, at least: “In a voluminous written and spoken record, Moniz has come out in favor of nuclear power, research into carbon capture and storage for coal, renewable energy and shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing.”
Hey, if you care about carbon emissions, you need to be supporting nuclear power and fracking. Otherwise you’re just a Luddite poseur.
WHITE HOUSE: It’s Time to Legalize Cell Phone Unlocking. Good. So let’s see some legislation.
USA TODAY: Gun-Control Stampede Is Misguided. “A more effective approach is the one Virginia took after the Virginia Tech massacre.”
DOING BUSINESS in China. “Trust no one.”
A KICKSTARTER PROJECT: Kim Jong Il: The Unauthorized Biography.
SEQUESTER SPECIAL: At Reason, they’re “unconscionably slashing 2.3 percent off our subscription price!” How will they stay in business with such deep, deep cuts?
IN THE MAIL: From Charles J. Glasser, International Libel and Privacy Handbook: A Global Reference for Journalists, Publishers, Webmasters, and Lawyers.
ROBERT MCMANUS ON ANDREW CUOMO: Pining For The Bad Old Days. “Albany remains Albany; its corrupt appetites run deep, as does the rot. Cuomo, to be sure, has taken charge. He runs an iron-fisted government, without even the pretense of a velvet glove. Just ask poor Mike Fayette about that.”
CONN CARROLL: 2014 and Obama’s Campaign of Pain. “Obama is done trying to work with Republicans in 2013 and 2014. He is abandoning any real effort for bipartisan immigration, gun, or energy reform. The bulk of his effort will now be devoted to eliminating all Republican power in Washington. And Obama’s first step in that campaign will be to maximize the amount of pain the sequester inflicts on the American people. . . . For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people.”
Somebody should really put in a FOIA request for communications between the White House and agencies about sequester implementation. There’s gold in those emails.