Sanborn is an inoffensive little country town about 45 miles down the road. Folks get along. The economy is pretty good. Hardly enough crime to shake a stick at, and the wives have pretty much stopped bringing shredded carrots in lime Jello to the church-basement potlucks.
It's just the kind of target bigger government looks for. We'll teach those Neanderthal bastards!
Sanborn has a three-member public utilities board. All three were men. One's term expired, and a woman applied. So did the incumbent. The town council re-appointed him, making her mad and generating a complaint to Higher.
Iowa has a law vaguely requiring "gender balance" on city boards and commissions. Who ever got the Sanborn beef lateraled it to our state ombudswoman.
Apparently a few reams of correspondence ensued, ending with her sheaf of "recommendations for corrective actions." The council promised to keep them on file and maybe get back to her. It seems the legislators (a) passed the law in order to mollify gender-balance voters and (b) failed to prescribe any punishment for violations in order to comfort male chauvinist pigs.
And this made her stomp her official ombudsfoot:
"According to a letter Ombudsman (sic) Ruth Cooperrider sent to the Sanborn mayor and city council members this week, the town did not take any of her suggested corrective actions. She expressed frustration, but said this would be her final communication."
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Please stop throwing china at me. Gender balance is a good idea. And foot-stomping is not solely a female trait; see a rerun of any Obama press conference after congress declined to give him exactly what he wanted.
It doesn't make a Hell of a lot of difference whether an official chair is warmed by bureaucratic butt sheathed in silken step-ins or a hairy one sporting camo boxers. If the job is administrative all that's required is a competent administrator. If it is policy-making, it needs only a human with a sense of sane policy-making.
For instance, I fear nothing from Janet Yellen that I wouldn't have feared from Larry Summers. Toilet seat up or toilet seat down makes no never mind to the actual issue of how much funny money to print up so His Ineptness and the congress can keep right on buying your vote.
Feb 5, 2014
...And, By The Way and FWIW, The NRA Gives Him an "F"
I woke up a few minutes ago with that acute depression that overcomes a journalist when he suddenly realizes he missed the lede. Glance back at the previous post making fun of retiring congressslug Bob Andrews who went zero-for-646 over 23 years.
Now, 23 years is 8,395 days. Bob's proposed 646 new laws over that span represents an ambition to create one new federal law every 12.995 days. Cut the guy some slack, figure he took a Sunday or two off to get together with his homies to watch the ponies run at Meadowlands, and round that up to 14 days.
The meaning is that every other Monday morning you would need to check the Congressional Record carefully for a new Bob-dictate detailing what you must do, or not do, on pain of federal civil or criminal prosecution.
Suppose he had been successful. Imagine how the Washington Post would have praised him; the most "effective" legislator in the nation's history.
And the other 534 would be green with envy, racing like Man-O-War to catch up.
Now, 23 years is 8,395 days. Bob's proposed 646 new laws over that span represents an ambition to create one new federal law every 12.995 days. Cut the guy some slack, figure he took a Sunday or two off to get together with his homies to watch the ponies run at Meadowlands, and round that up to 14 days.
The meaning is that every other Monday morning you would need to check the Congressional Record carefully for a new Bob-dictate detailing what you must do, or not do, on pain of federal civil or criminal prosecution.
Suppose he had been successful. Imagine how the Washington Post would have praised him; the most "effective" legislator in the nation's history.
And the other 534 would be green with envy, racing like Man-O-War to catch up.
Feb 4, 2014
Less is a helluva a lot; zero is sublime
I propose a massive private fund-raising drive to build a marble monument to Bob Andrews. A big one, right smack in the middle of the National Mall.
The liberal New Jersey congressthing is retiring after nearly a quarter century eating high on the federal hog. In all that time he proposed 646 new federal laws.
None passed. Not one.
And if that doesn't make him the most useful slug in American political history I'll kiss your arse in the Capitol Rotunda and lend you money to hire Rachel Maddow for live teevee commentary.
The liberal New Jersey congressthing is retiring after nearly a quarter century eating high on the federal hog. In all that time he proposed 646 new federal laws.
None passed. Not one.
And if that doesn't make him the most useful slug in American political history I'll kiss your arse in the Capitol Rotunda and lend you money to hire Rachel Maddow for live teevee commentary.
Feb 3, 2014
Welcome, Janet!
Janet Yellin has just been sworn in as the chief of of the American mimeograph machine. To celebrate, the American equity markets crashed again. (DJ IA down a couple hundred points.) The heaviest investors seem confused about how much free money she'll be printing for the banks to loan them for purposes of speculation.
Only a despicable hard-money crank would suggest a causal relationship between Janet's ascendancy to Ben's old seat and the roiled markets.* After all, she she was against the tapir before she was for it.
So far, the tapir isn't working too well despite the public relations efforts of the country's best-oiled spin machines.
It was supposed to push interest rates up a tad, not much, just enough to make the aforesaid cranks shut up about Wiemar. It is working the other way. Interest on government insecurities is still trickling down -- a few minutes ago the 10-year at 2.6 per cent and the 30 at a little over 3.5.
If you don't follow numbers like that, no problem. Their meaning is simple. Your bank will continue paying you effectively nothing on your CDs, large and small, for a while, anyway. In due course, though, we'll probably have to pull a Turkey where the Ankara version of the Ben and Janet show has just been shoved into reverse and lending rates were tripled to 12 per cent for overnight loans.
(I won't be putting money into Turkish CDs, though, because one of the effects will be oh-crap price hikes. A respectable working stiff's hookah, no brass filigree, plain plastic tubing, at 38 zillion lira?)
It's all confusing, but I suppose a guy should just think back to Ben Bernanke when he cut the Kwee from 85 billion to 75 billion thin-air FRCs per month. He was careful to promise the too-big-to-fails that it was all sort of a joke. Lend away, Boys and Girls. Vee haf other vays of making all the marks -- wait, I mean dollars of course , ha-ha -- you'll ever need.
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*When a writer is too chicken to predict whether the markets will go up or down, he is permitted by long tradition to wimp out with "roiled."
Only a despicable hard-money crank would suggest a causal relationship between Janet's ascendancy to Ben's old seat and the roiled markets.* After all, she she was against the tapir before she was for it.
So far, the tapir isn't working too well despite the public relations efforts of the country's best-oiled spin machines.
It was supposed to push interest rates up a tad, not much, just enough to make the aforesaid cranks shut up about Wiemar. It is working the other way. Interest on government insecurities is still trickling down -- a few minutes ago the 10-year at 2.6 per cent and the 30 at a little over 3.5.
If you don't follow numbers like that, no problem. Their meaning is simple. Your bank will continue paying you effectively nothing on your CDs, large and small, for a while, anyway. In due course, though, we'll probably have to pull a Turkey where the Ankara version of the Ben and Janet show has just been shoved into reverse and lending rates were tripled to 12 per cent for overnight loans.
(I won't be putting money into Turkish CDs, though, because one of the effects will be oh-crap price hikes. A respectable working stiff's hookah, no brass filigree, plain plastic tubing, at 38 zillion lira?)
It's all confusing, but I suppose a guy should just think back to Ben Bernanke when he cut the Kwee from 85 billion to 75 billion thin-air FRCs per month. He was careful to promise the too-big-to-fails that it was all sort of a joke. Lend away, Boys and Girls. Vee haf other vays of making all the marks -- wait, I mean dollars of course , ha-ha -- you'll ever need.
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*When a writer is too chicken to predict whether the markets will go up or down, he is permitted by long tradition to wimp out with "roiled."
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