Archive for 2017

January 25, 2017

QUESTION ASKED: Can Trump Fix the Carnage That Is Chicago?

But Trump is about more than crime when it comes to the nation’s urban centers. There are his promises to revive America’s deteriorating inner cities, of which Chicago has a surfeit. And if Trump intends to more broadly redefine the federal-city relationship by stepping in where the locals have failed, then he might also want to look into Chicago’s calamitous finances that have crippled the police department, schools and other vital municipal services while flogging its taxpayers.

The City of Sloping Shoulders would be the perfect laboratory for Trump’s promised repair work. Its schools are broke, yet it gives teachers raises and allows the Chicago Teachers Union to cap the number of charter schools the district can have. Extravagant pensions for public employees are crushing taxpayers and cutting into vital services. Neighborhood infrastructure is wanting. Residents and businesses are hightailing it out of the city and state.

The left ridicules Trump’s use of the word “carnage,” but it doesn’t do Chicago justice. “Catastrophic” and “calamitous” also should be thrown into the mix.

It ought to be Chicago’s job to fix Chicago, else it’s just a new kind of bailout under a different name.

UPDATE (From Glenn): Normally I’d agree, but a lot of Chicago’s problems — e.g., housing projects and welfare and gangs — had significant federal inputs. And a “bailout” that requires significant reforms might even be worth it. I’m not saying that’s the case, necessarily, but I can imagine that it might be.

Posted at 8:56 am by Stephen Green on Jan 25th, 2017

ROGER SIMON: Upend the ‘Faux System’ of White House Journalism. “The truth is that those organizations are indeed there by tradition, a tradition of droit du seigneur and corporate thuggery that makes you yearn for the extension of anti-trust legislation.”

Posted at 8:52 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 25th, 2017

POTEMKIN MISSILE: Is Putin’s Deadliest Weapons Program in Trouble?

The RS-28 Sarmat ICBM is supposed to be capable of delivering 10-16 nuclear warheads past Western missile defenses, but right now Russia is having trouble just getting one out of a test silo.

Posted at 8:23 am by Stephen Green on Jan 25th, 2017

JUSTICE? Navy sailor in jail for submarine photos pleads for mercy from Trump.

[Petty Officer First Class Kristian] Saucier, who served as a machinist’s mate aboard the USS Alexandria from 2007 to 2012, used his cellphone to photograph parts of the submarine’s nuclear propulsion system while it was docked at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Conn.

Saucier, who is married and has a 2-year-old daughter, began his 12-month sentence in October at the Federal Medical Center at Fort Devens, Mass.

He was convicted of unauthorized retention of national defense information, which is a felony, and received an “other-than-honorable” discharge from the Navy. He faced a possible 10 years in jail, his lawyers said.

His problems began when a worker at the naval base found Saucier’s cellphone near a Dumpster and, while going through it, found the photographs. The worker brought the cellphone to a retired Navy petty officer, who then notified federal agencies about the sensitive submarine pictures.

Saucier has a point about the “light of treatment afforded former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her illegal private email server, and former President Obama’s granting of clemency to Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who leaked classified information.” On the other hand, taking and possession of photos of an attack submarine’s nuclear plant is a serious security breach.

Posted at 8:09 am by Stephen Green on Jan 25th, 2017

Trump Foes Egged Me On to Support Him.. “While walking to an inaugural ball, I heard shouts — and felt yolk run down my hair.”

Then:

I froze. Emily Post is silent on the proper way for a lady in a ball gown to respond to an aerial assault. I had to wing it. First, I yelled back. I had spent six years living here, I shouted, and Washington was as much my city as the place I now call home. But then I, too, began to crack, and the egg yolk on my face mixed with tears.

Somehow—it might have been the crying and hollering—my predicament captured the attention of a more-casually attired fairy-god-couple. These kind people must have been liberal Democrats (not that it matters), given where they confessed to working as they helped me. Nonetheless, they asked if I was all right, gently took my arm, and led me to their nearby apartment to clean off. Then they let me out the back door.

At best, I had been a lukewarm and silent Trump supporter, a Goldwater-Reagan-George W. Bush girl who had decided to attend the ball mostly for the opportunity to wear a fancy dress. But when my heels hit the sidewalk that second time, I committed: I would now back President Trump.

There’s been a lot of that kind of decision-making lately, and the Progressive Left has no one to blame but themselves.

Posted at 7:47 am by Stephen Green on Jan 25th, 2017

IT COULDN’T GET MUCH WORSE: The Future of Air Travel Is Bliss — Really.

When the taxi drops you off at the airport, you notice your flight doesn’t begin boarding for another 20 minutes — plenty of time. Entering the terminal, you flash a big smile at the discreetly placed infrared cameras that are sending a scan of your gorgeous mug to security central, where facial recognition software matches your likeness to the one on file. You attach the routing tags you printed at home to your Tumi and dump the bag onto the luggage belt, confident you’ll see your rollie again in this lifetime, thanks to the tracking app on your smartphone. You zip through a series of checkpoints: Some read the personal profile on your phone like it’s an airport E-ZPass; at others you stare into an iris-scanning camera or touch a fingerprint-reading pad. A few leisurely minutes later, you step on the plane and greet the flight attendant.

It’s then that you realize you’ve just had your first human interaction since you tipped the cabbie.

So this is really about recognition technology improving and streamlining the airport experience, which is often the worst part of flying. But the airliner of most recent vintage I’ve flown on had so little hip and legroom that even my skinny, 5’10” frame was crowded — and that was the aisle seat.

Posted at 7:24 am by Stephen Green on Jan 25th, 2017

TO BE FAIR, THERE’S A LOT OF COMPETITION. The $7 billion school improvement grant program: Greatest failure in the history of the US Department of Education?

Despite its gargantuan price tag, SIG generated no academic gains for the students it was meant to help. Failing schools that received multi-year grants from the program to “turn around” ended up with results no better than similar schools that received zero dollars from the program. To be clear: Billions spent had no effect.

When Washington spends billions of dollars on something, it’s reasonable to assume it will do some good, especially when the Secretary of Education promises “transformation not tinkering.” But not with SIG.

No matter how the researchers crunched the numbers, the abysmal results were the same. SIG didn’t improve math scores. Or reading scores. Or high school graduation rates. Or college enrollment. SIG didn’t improve elementary or secondary schools. It didn’t help schools in Race-to-the-Top states or non-Race-to-the-Top states.

The results are almost too much to believe.

Oh, you’ll believe them.

Posted at 7:08 am by Stephen Green on Jan 25th, 2017

ALEX TABARROK: We need an FDA commissioner who sees the invisible graveyard. “As someone who has written about FDA reform for many years it’s gratifying that all of the people whose names have been floated for FDA Commissioner would be excellent, including Balaji Srinivasan, Jim O’Neill, Joseph Gulfo, and Scott Gottlieb. Each of these candidates understands two important facts about the FDA. First, that there is fundamental tradeoff–longer and larger clinical trials mean that the drugs that are approved are safer but at the price of increased drug lag and drug loss. Unsafe drugs create concrete deaths and palpable fear but drug lag and drug loss fill invisible graveyards. We need an FDA commissioner who sees the invisible graveyard.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 25th, 2017