The AP Quotes Themselves

Re: "Obama appears to have upper hand in tight race" (Monday, Page A5), this article reports that "President Barack Obama is poised to eke out a victory" over Mitt Romney for the presidency, "according to an Associated Press analysis".  What I find most interesting about this article is that it was authored, not by a person, but by: the Associated Press.

 

It's a curious journalistic practice at best when a news organization like the AP quotes itself in the third person as the supposedly reputable source of the analysis.  Kind of makes you think they couldn't find a more impartial source to come to the same conclusions.  What takes it from curious to questionable is the fact that this "analysis" comes courtesy of a news organization that openly supports Barack Obama, and has repeatedly skewed its coverage in his favor. 

 

What makes it laughable is that the AP seems to think there's no level they can stoop to in presenting their opinions as news that would cause them to lose credibility, an ever-diminishing virtue amongst the ranks of so many in our Media.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

The UN Lurks On Texas Elections

Regarding "Abbott’s threat against foreign poll observers stirs backlash" (Page B1, Thursday), it is interesting to note who created the controversy in the first place, and it wasn't Attorney General Greg Abbott.  As the article details, United Nations-affiliated groups like OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) were approached to interfere with Texas' elections at the invitation of a variety of Democrat front groups who claimed Texas' recently passed Voter ID laws would suppress voter turnout.  Three things stand out:

 

1) The Texas law has been put on hold by federal courts and will not be enforced for the 2012 elections.

 

2) The front groups promoting the presence of OSCE included Project Vote, an affiliate of ACORN.  ACORN was itself the perpetrator of the biggest voter fraud scam in America, convicted in 2010 of registering thousands of phony voters in over a dozen states throughout the union.

 

3) Secretary of State Hope Andrade's contention that OSCE's presence was merely part of a "valuable information sharing program" is contradicted by the available facts.  There is little dispute that OSCE came at the behest of the Democrat front groups, and her own director of the elections division, Keith Ingram, described the OSCE team as "observers".  

 

The 11th hour claim by OSCE and their supporters that they were merely here to learn does not pass the smell test.  

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

LTE: Bring it on

Regarding: "New scoreboard could aid Super Bowl bid" (Tuesday Sports), if Houston hopes to host a second Superbowl, they better commit to that scoreboard, and it better be soon.  Prior to the modern era, if you wanted to land a Super Bowl, you needed one thing: A vacationland setting.  However, 8 of the last 12 awards have gone to teams with new stadiums; the others have gone to Tampa, New Orleans and Miami (2).  Miami, by the way, has hosted the big game 10 times.

 

By those measures, San Francisco should be a shoo-in to win the 2016 award, since they're the only finalist with a brand new stadium and a vacationland venue.  That leaves Houston competing with the aged Sun Life stadium in Miami for 2017, and while we ain't Miami, we offer a vastly superior venue.

 

With 34 teams in the NFL and the average lifespan of an NFL stadium trending less than 34 years, in the future, new stadiums will monopolize the selection process.  Hopefully Houston scores one more shot in 2017.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

------------------------------------------------

Bring it on

If Houston hopes to host a second Super Bowl, we better commit to that scoreboard, and it better be soon. Prior to the modern era, if you wanted to land a Super Bowl, you needed one thing: a vacationland setting. However, eight of the last 12 awards have gone to teams with new stadiums; the others have gone to Tampa, New Orleans and Miami (twice). Miami, by the way, has hosted the big game 10 times.

By those measures, San Francisco should be a shoo-in to win the 2016 award, since it is the only finalist with a brand-new stadium and a vacationland venue. That leaves Houston competing with the aged Sun Life stadium in Miami for 2017, and while we ain't Miami, we offer a vastly superior venue.

With 34 teams in the NFL and the average lifespan of an NFL stadium trending less than 34 years, in the future, new stadiums will monopolize the selection process. Let's hope Houston scores one more shot in 2017.

Pete Smith, Cypress

 

http://www.chron.com/opinion/letters/article/Letters-Reflecting-on-the-Texans-scoreboard-3985843.php

Italy's Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

Regarding "7 quake experts convicted for failing to warn of risks" (Page A4, Tuesday), in a bizarre move, Italian courts convicted those scientists of manslaughter for failing to predict earthquakes that resulted in the death of hundreds of people.  The article points out the absurdity of holding people criminally responsible for such an inexact science, where the outcome is anything but certain. 

 

If Italian prosecutors want to pursue real malpractice in Italian society, I recommend they start with the politicians and financial ministers that convinced the Italian people that it was OK to fund their lavish welfare state with an orgy of debt.  Those chickens have now come home to roost, and Italian society teeters on the brink of collapse.

 

When that collapse happens, they won't be measuring the number of deaths in the hundreds, and unlike earthquake science, there's no lack of evidence as to the malpractice.  Fortunately, Italy's criminal justice system is geared up to prosecute the perpetrators.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

Political Correctness In The Age of Biodiversity

Just read "Strong Navy is necessary for U.S. security" in the Sunday Chronicle, and oh, how I laughed.  Many thanks to Juan M. Garcia III, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs for an inadvertently humorous piece that tells us almost nothing as to how we can maintain a strong navy, other than to deploy a "Great Green Fleet" fueled in part by bio-fuels and other enviro-friendly technologies. There was one passage in particular that I found sublime: "We have tripled our solar energy use and we are exploring wind, geothermal and hydrothermal power. These initiatives will give us a fighting advantage in the next war, and may help avoid the next war altogether."

 

It's nice to know that the Navy has rediscovered the advantages of wind, albeit that Garcia was talking about windmills as opposed to sails, but it boggles the mind as to how Green technologies could be deployed to any particular fighting advantage on a ship. And how exactly could it be used to help avoid the next war altogether? Would some future enemy unilaterally disarm in the face of our awesome commitment to Gaia? Why do people write such things? Can they just not help themselves?

 

We must be thankful, I suppose, that Mr. Garcia didn't find any particular military advantage in Biodiversity, or sundry other of the fashionable catchwords of the day; but then, he may simply be holding them in reserve to be the gist of some future articles extolling the manifest virtues of political correctness.

Smug Anti-Houstonianism

Regarding "Houston goggles’ have inspired author", I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting when Chron Editors heard author Justin Cronin's pitch for his front page article (and the accompanying interview in Sec G). Maybe then I could comprehend why they chose to give him a forum to: a) flack his book on the front page as if it was news; b) gig Houston for all the things allegedly wrong with it, replete with all the cliches lurking in the brainpan of an East Coast Elitist; c) gleefully rationalize his dubious commitment to his financial obligations because it allowed him to write his books.

 

The smug delivery and endless Elitist East Coast digs were particularly irritating. Let's review them, shall we? We'll start with his opening sentences in the "Goggles" piece:

"Fellow Houstonians, let’s face it. To the uninitiated, ours is a city that takes some getting used to — a 600-square-mile architectural free-for-all, with rivers that run brown and sometimes backwards, trees like something out of Dr. Seuss, high-rises that sprout like weeds on a coastal shelf so flat you could flick a marble and watch it roll for a week."

How many things are wrong with this sentence? First of all, they aren't rivers, they're bayous. Would it be too much to ask of Cronin that he pay enough attention to get this detail right? Second, they run backward only from the perspective of an ignorant East Coaster. Trees out of Dr. Seuss? I suppose he's referring to some of the indigenous flora, but his claim is incoherent. I can't think of a single tree or bush that looks like it doesn't belong in Houston, much less any that look like they only belong in the fantastical world of Seuss. Further to his point, I've been all over the country and nowhere exists the volume and variety of all of America's favorite trees such as Oak, Pine and Elm, and they are a righteous compliment to the more exotic types. Bottom line, Houston is an arboreal paradise, particularly when compared to the mean and pathetic canopy of Philadelphia.

The less said about the last sentence the better, except to remark that both the "sprout like weeds" and "coastal shelf" cliches have not only been done to death, but been done to death by East Coast Elitists that had preceded Professor Cronin. He doubles down with the descriptive malpractice in the next paragraph when he proclaims "A friend of mine once remarked, 'You don’t move to Houston for the view.'" Clearly neither of them has in their time here picked up on the long standing Houston appreciation for both irony and fighting words, likely because they both hailed from some illiterate and pestilential hellhole like Philadelphia, and burdened by the self-esteem issues that cause outsiders to make such statements.

Cronin is big on overstatement, particularly on another cliche-ridden topic: Houston's heat. My former home town of Detroit and Philadelphia both have a period of a few weeks where the temperature and humidity rival that of a Houston summer. In fact, I stepped off a plane from Detroit in August of 1985 and the 100 degree temperature struck me not at all. It was as hot and humid back in Detroit. Granted, that weather lasts for almost five months in Houston, but who doesn't know that before they get here? And why Cronin thinks moving to Houston in the summer would affect your mental health is anybody's guess.

His biggest East Coast Diss of Houston, though, was captured in this sentence: "(Houston) took some getting used to. But eventually I began to see what was interesting, distinctive and sometimes even beautiful about my new hometown. (My wife and I call this phenomenon 'getting your Houston goggles on.')" As Left Handed compliments go, it is East Coast cliche that not only borders on parody, but flogs it into submission: it is simultaneously precious, smug and ignorant, and would be applauded by the denizens of the parties he's clearly used to attending, none of whom have ever been to an ice house.  And how anybody could fail to appreciate Houston's beauty is beyond me, much less insist that they can mostly only see it once they've put on their "Houston goggles".  Those scary aforementioned trees are everywhere in an almost berserk abundance, and yet there is symmetry. Our bayous are unique in an American city, hundreds of miles of genuine Nature running straight through the concrete canyons.

 

As to the allegedly chaotic architecture in this city, that has been much overstated. It was never jarring and absolutely faded to insignificance within a week of getting here.  And relative to skylines, in America, I've seen 'em all, and Houston's downtown skyline is top three in the country. 
 

Thankfully, the rest of the article as well as the interview were a blurb for his book and a recitation of his personal faults, including taking a book advance he was certain he could not repay, his relief that he could welsh on his contractual obligations but protect his house, and the amazing implication that he dogged it during his years as a Rice professor.
 

As a transplant myself, it's hard not to take exception to the idea that Houston of all places "takes some getting used to". In 1985 I stepped off a plane from Detroit, fell in love and never looked back.  I also had no notion of inflicting a Northerner's xenophobia on my adopted town, a product of my upbringing, no doubt, but also an ethic that I see runs straight through the marrow of Texas and Texans.  Sure, Houston has its warts, but almost none of them are the type Cronin describes. And beyond the physical differences with the likes of Philly, the social vibe is head and shoulders above most other cities in America.  But that's a topic for another day. 

With the exception of a tenuous morality when it comes to meeting his financial obligations, I'm sure Mr. Cronin is a good person, and I wish him well with his "Triptych" of vampire novels. That said, I hope to never again read the baloney that was extruded on the front pages of Sections A and G from last Sunday, or at least not so much of it in one sitting.

The Implausibility of Light as a Wave

As I understand such things, conventional wisdom in astronomical circles holds that the light of an object - be it a planet, star or other celestial body - is transmitted in all directions simultaneously, and eventually reaches the eyes or instruments of those in a position to observe it, be they from planet Earth or somewhere else. It is also a given that light travels at 300,000 km/hr in a wave, with enough force to penetrate countless obstacles over unfathomable distances so as to reach our eyes.
 

At the heart and soul of this proposition is that this light - composed of photons - has some kind of substance, and that that substance was produced by the source, in this case, a star.

 

How plausible is this notion? First, let us consider light being broadcast along just a single plane, separated for the sake of argument into 360 degrees. Were this our physical world, we would be forced to accept that light could travel from some star for a million years and arrive - plus or minus any obstacles encountered or the gravitic influence of the kajillion things it had to pass or near before it reached you - with equal brightness at 360 different points. Those 360 points of light, having travelled for a million years, would arrive at destinations along that single plane approximately 4,400 light years apart (distance x (Pi/2)/360), plenty of distance to wedge yet further sets of eyes to observe the aforementioned star.

 

However, those 360 degrees are themselves infinitely divisible, which means that along a single plane, the image would be transmitted infinitely. The physical universe that light travels through exists in three dimensions, which poses us the amusing prospect of multiplying an infinity of possibilities in two dimensions by additional infinities of possibilities. And yet, any source of light is finite in its properties: weight, mass, energy generated, etc, and thus finite in its capacity to generate light - or images.

 

This is never so evident as when you consider that stars of varying brightness exist at all. Surely the fact that there are stars of different sizes and brightness speaks to the finiteness of their radiance?
 

So, how could any source of light - regardless of how bright - radiate light in an infinity of directions?

 

Further, how is it that not only light could be transmitted infinitely, but the image of that star as well? We know from our physical world that images are measurable based on their size and resolution, and the larger the image or the greater the detail, the more computing, storage and electrical power that are required to manipulate them. By inference, this must mean that a broadcast image has measurable mass or substance of some sort.  It is also an axiom that larger objects are more visible at distance than smaller ones.  If indeed it is true that a telescope with enough resolution could not only detect the light but pick up the image of the star, then that image as broadcast must have considerable mass to travel thousands of light years to retain enough resolution to be progressively better discerned by ever more powerful telescopes.

 

As a further test, is it not the case that the light that travelled 1 million years to my eyes must be different from the light that travels from the same source to the eyes of the person next to me? Nobody would argue that the light and images the two of us perceive in looking at, say, a globe of the world, would be different, since of necessity we would see a different view of the globe based on our position within the room. How then would it be different for our star, other than the immensely greater distance the light travelled?

 

Assuming this reasoning is sound, we must accept that there is some other means by which images and radiation - regardless of the spectrum - are transmitted through the cosmos to our eyes. Is it not more likely that the image of the star, rather than being broadcast, is in fact "received" by some medium heretofore unexplained and sustained until it reaches our eyes? That in fact, the dynamic exists not with the transmission of light and images but to our eyes, but the perceiving of them?

 

To me, it's a lot more plausible that an infinity of observers have the ability to perceive any given image by some means we don't understand than it is for a single point to transmit an infinity of images by a process that we do.

 

Footnote: Speaking of the infinitude of things, it is awesome to think that an image projected from the light of a star is refreshed anywhere from the width of a photon to infinity, depending on how you look at these things, and then sent out in minisculely different versions in an infinitude of directions to the expectant telescopes of eager Astronomers the Galaxy over. I read an article recently about a camera developed out of MIT that captures a trillion images per second.

Strange to think that a Photon moves almost exactly one foot in a trillionth of a second, and that we are approaching a time when we can capture its image.

LTE: Prize morphs into a farce

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize has gotten so politically correct in the modern era - absurdly so - that it was inevitable that I would eventually read these words: "European Union wins Nobel Peace Prize" (Saturday World), and laugh out loud upon reading them.

 

In the last decade, the laughs came courtesy of the increasingly dubious cast of characters who won, including Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Yasser Arafat.  Going back even further, the laughs were provoked by the numerous occasions upon which the Nobel committee has awarded the Prize to an inanimate object with no discernible track record in promoting peace.   Previous non-corporeal and unworthy entities to win the prize in the past 25 years have included the United Nations (2001), the International Atomic Energy Agency (2005), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007).

 

This year, however, the Euros - apparently dealing with self-esteem issues so massive that they failed to appreciate the absurdity of their actions - have decided to give the award to: themselves.

 

I wait with bated breath to see how they top this one next year.  Anybody want to handicap the likelihood that the Nobel Committee will award the next Peace Prize to.......the Nobel Committee?
------------------------------------------
Prize morphs into a farce

Regarding "European Union wins Nobel Peace Prize" (Page A19, Oct. 13), the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize has provoked a lot of laughs in the past. In the last decade, it was for the increasingly dubious cast of characters who won, including Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Barack Obama.

In the past 25 years, it was because the Nobel committee has - on multiple occasions - awarded the prize to an inanimate object with no discernible track record in promoting peace.

Previous non-corporate entities to win the prize include the United Nations (2001), the International Atomic Energy Agency (2005), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007).

This year, however, the Euros have outdone themselves, and the laughs come courtesy of self-esteem issues so massive that they decided to give the award to: themselves.

I wait with bated breath to see how they top this one next year.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Kountze-cheerleaders-peace-prize-Boy-3965743.php

Media Double Standards

Read an article entitled "Ryan sought federal aid as he urged cuts".  In it, the Democrats favorite news organization - the Associated Press - smugly and predictably reports that Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan, "a fiscal conservative and critic of federal handouts, lobbied for tens of millions of dollars on behalf of his constituents", including money from President Obama's Stimulus program. 

 

Articles criticizing supposedly hypocritical Republicans for accepting or soliciting government funds for their districts are a staple during the political season, since there is no shortage of berserk government spending programs, and no shortage of Republicans criticizing them.

 

My question is, why is this a story? Given the way that the federal spending process works, once the money is in the pipeline, it is going to get spent regardless of what critics say or do.   If the Republicans targeted by these partisan smears did not seek their fair share of these funds, wouldn't they be guilty of failing to represent their constituents? That doesn't mean they should stop fighting the practice, nor does it make them hypocrites for doing both things at the same time.

 

It's easy to be a Democrat politician in this environment. Compared to Republicans, you are portrayed as virtuous for promoting any and all berserk government spending.  It's even easier to be a Democrat voter.  Since your decision making process involves no actual thinking, but merely what you read in the paper that affirms your preconceptions, this type of article is tailor-made for you, and in endless supply.

 

I wait in vain for the Media to run a story about a Democrat - any Democrat - that opposes any aspect of the status quo. Now that would be a story worth reading.

LTE: Slauson's wrists slapped

Regarding "Jets' Slauson fined $10,000," (Page C7, Friday), there's an epidemic of dirty play in the NFL that revolves around the intent to injure. It's time to get it under control.

The fine for ending Brian Cushing's season and possibly his career - according to the NFL - is equivalent to what offensive lineman Matt Slauson earns roughly every ten minutes of a football game.

Since any objective review of the play shows that it was a dirty hit from behind that targeted Cushing's knees, I suggest Slauson and players like him pay a higher price. If their victim is out for the season, so are they, and they don't draw a paycheck while they're out.
That should get things under control.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Cushing-s-injury-Medicare-arrested-3944272.php

Democrats Confront Reality

Various pundits and commentators in the past week have attempted to legitimize the incredible claim that the economy gained 873,000 jobs last month, given the convenient boost it provides to the President's election prospects.   In the same breath, they are quick to attack anybody who questions the validity of the numbers.  In his article "In conservatives' war on reality, the facts are optional", Leonard Pitts not only elaborates on these themes, but attempts to discredit the very notion that any claim of the Obama Administration is incredible.   Exhibit A: his thesis that Republican skepticism about the numbers constitutes a partisan "war on reality".
 

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate as reflected in their Household Survey dropped from 8.1 to 7.8 percent, an improvement of 873,000 jobs. For the same time period, the BLS also reported a net job gain of only 114,000 jobs based on their Employer Payroll Survey. It's instructive that in Pitts' world, it is paranoid to note the gross discrepancy in these two numbers, much less suggest that somebody might have cooked the books.
 

The credibility of Pitts and numerous Obama defenders in the Media rests on what they report, and how they report it: The BLS offers two Household Survey employment numbers, the raw number of 873,000 and the "Adjusted" number of 294,000. The raw number includes, among other things, various categories of folks who do not draw a paycheck, who are "off-the-books", or whose existence is otherwise difficult to verify, including "nonagricultural self employed, unpaid family workers, private household workers, and workers absent without pay from their jobs". The BLS itself places little faith in the raw number, and forthrightly states that the "Adjusted" number better reflects reality, since it tracks so much more consistently with the Payroll Survey.
 

The question of the BLS's credibility rests on three things:
 

1) Has the BLS ever reported such a singular discrepancy in the past? For example, has there ever been a period when the raw Household Survey showed 7.5 times as much of an employment gain as the Payroll Survey? The answer is that it is extremely rare, and invariably reflects an over or under-estimation of actual jobs gains/losses which are smoothed out in subsequent surveys. In fact, the BLS's historical figures show that over the entirety of the Obama Administration, the two surveys reflect almost exactly the same number of job gains and losses. So at the very least, the timing of these survey results is extremely suspect, based on the BLS's own reports.
 

2) Does the BLS place much significance in a one-month result? To their discredit, to a certain extent they do, even though we've established that a single monthly number has no meaning. In their press release, they matter-of-factly state that "the unemployment rate declined by 0.3 percentage point to 7.8 percent in September (873,000 jobs)". Clearly, what they can credibly say is that these results are based on a survey and constitute their best guess. The fact that they don't qualify the results does not reflect well on their credibility, because it provides valuable cover to Obama supporters who can then claim that they are only reciting BLS statistics.
 

3) How susceptible is the BLS survey to false results? Per their website, the BLS admits that they survey a far smaller number of Households (60,000) than Employers (486,000), and that as a result, the margin for error on the raw Household number is "four times that of the payroll survey on a monthly basis".  Ironically, the average of reported jobs by combining the Adjusted Household Survey and the Payroll Survey very much validates that margin of error.
 

Another contributing factor is the BLS practice of changing their survey sample by 25% every period, or 15,000 households. This is a sensible practice over the long term, but increases the likelihood that the results might be skewed month to month. Why is this important? Because in a nation of 135 million jobs, in such a small sample size - 60,000 - it would take only 400 extra Households answering in the affirmative to show an "improvement" of 873,000 jobs. So, if the new sample were to over-represent booming areas like Houston to even a very small degree, you would get a false result. 
 

Case in point: the BLS showed 879,000 jobs gained on an Adjusted basis in February of this year. In March and April, those jobs gains were entirely wiped out, and the remainder of 2012 was a see-saw with no net gain in jobs until this month. In fact, a review of available BLS stats going back to 1990 shows the month-over-month job gains/losses to be all over the map. Bottom line, this shows that a single month's results are meaningless, and that only the overall trends are relevant.
 

So, is Leonard Pitts Jr. right or wrong? In my judgment, he is not only wrong, but irresponsible. Pitts insists that, in questioning the numbers, Republicans are challenging the credibility of the BLS statisticians. While it is unclear what the number crunchers think about how their data is used, it is clear that the BLS had an obligation to put a single month's numbers in perspective. They don't. And nowhere does Pitts point out that the White House and most of the Media cherry-picked the numbers and stripped them of context, so either he hasn't done his homework, in which case he's intellectually lazy, or he knew the numbers were questionable but chose to attack Republicans anyway, in which case - in this instance at least - he's a Demagogue.

Given his resume, that's not a hard charge to substantiate.
 

And the larger issue begs the question of what incredible statistic that redounded to the benefit of the Obama campaign might cause Pitts or others amongst the Faithful to be skeptical: 2 million jobs in one month? 5 million?  At what point would they cease to suspend disbelief regarding the things they read?  Nobody in the Media ever asks them that question, and Republican politicians are too lame to make the case that they should.

Regardless, in this instance at least, Stephen Colbert's claim that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" appears to be incorrect, and Leonard Pitts Jr. is long overdue for a Reality Check of his own.

Read all about it on the BLS website: http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ces_cps_trends.pdf and http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm.

 

 

LTE: Word play

Regarding "Texas has dog in Florida-Mexico tomato fight" (Page A1, Sunday), I enjoyed the word-play, particularly the sentence "Texans have a stake in this beef" in the middle of the story.
Just thought I'd let you know that your readers notice. Thanks for the chuckle.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Oveta-Culp-Hobby-Harrison-twins-cancer-3929731.php

Free Money From Obama

So, I read in the Chronicle that rocket maker SpaceX is poised to deliver 1000 pounds of water, food and equipment to the International Space Station at a cost of $133 million for the first of 12 missions. That works out to $133,000 per pound. By contrast, the cost of a Space Shuttle launch last year was roughly $500 Million, but could deliver 50,000 pounds. That works out to only $10,000 per pound.

In addition, the Shuttle System could deliver and install massive components, haul away the garbage, fix the plumbing, clean the windows, replace the crew, adjust the solar panels, top off all fluids and do a 64 point inspection for no additional charge.

Don't get me wrong: I've been a big critic of the Shuttle: a system that requires you to launch a building into space when a canister would do, and the Shuttle never came close to delivering on the promised $100 per pound payload cost projected back in the 60s and 70s, but by any measure, it appears to be a bargain compared to the vendors that have replaced it. 

 

SpaceX's website forthrightly explains why.  Although there's massive happy-talk about delivering "launch" costs of $1000 per pound or less, their website confirms the $133 million cost to "deliver" 1000 pounds of product to the space station, along with some blahbeddyblah about the costs associated with the Dragon space capsule necessary to dock with the ISS.  Seriously?  I wonder how far UPS would have gotten if they quoted delivery prices based on getting the product to your building, then Jacked the price another 90% to actually carry it to your office? 

 

At first glance, it looks like NASA has replaced one boondoggle with an even bigger one.  That is, until you peel back a few layers of the onion.  Do that and you discover that all private sector contracts for space trucking have been awarded to companies that make big contributions to Democrats.  Let's take a look at SpaceX as Exhibit A:

 

Elon Musk - CEO of SpaceX - is no stranger to government handouts from the Obama administration.  In addition to the $278 Million he got to develop low earth orbit cargo ships from Obama, he also got the aforementioned $1.4 Billion contract for 12 measly deliveries. 

 

Musk also got $400 million from Obama for the Tesla electric car, which is set to retail for around $100K per vehicle. It gets better. Musk is a principle at SolarCity, which got $275 Million from Obama for a no-bid contract to put solar cells on military bases and then sell the energy back to the military. In short, Obama provided the startup capital, the customer, a guaranteed revenue stream and still has taxpayers on the hook if Musk fucks this up. BTW, SolarCity is under IRS investigation for monkey business on application for Fed energy tax credits.

 

No evidence that Musk is collecting food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, housing assistance or a battery powered wheelchair at little or no cost to him, but those would be the only things in the Obama Goodies Bag he's not tapping into. Musk is of course a big contributor to Obama.

Cooking The Books, Pt II

Re: "Conspiracy theories on jobs report dismissed" (Saturday Nation), the Washington Post goes to great pains to validate the legitimacy of the unemployment numbers the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) recently put out, but it is the two competing statistics that the BLS itself put out that calls their legitimacy into question. In the survey of businesses, the BLS concluded that 114,000 jobs had been added. In the survey of Households, the BLS concluded that 983,000 more people were now magically employed than last month. They both can't be right.
 

The problem is likely in the methods used by the BLS. They survey 66,000 households on a monthly basis. For them to conjure 983,000 jobs gained out of that sample size, only 400 additional households would need to answer "yes" when asked if they were employed. Here's the Kicker: the BLS itself admits that it changes out 25% of the households surveyed every month. So the 16,500 new households surveyed would need to have only the most infinitesimal skew in their reported employment to come up with close to a million new jobs: 100 households, to be exact, or .006 percent.
 

Considering that all professional pollsters preface the validity of their surveys as saying they are accurate to within "plus or minus 4%", it's hard to see how the federal government can claim a margin of error close to 7000 percent better. It is also interesting to note how tantalizingly close the reported job gain was to the magical mark of 1 Million. Kind of reinforces the notion that this result is Wishful Thinking engineered by bureaucrats in thrall to the Obama Administration, dialed back just a smidge to give it some validity.

Cooking The Books On Jobs

Regarding "US jobless rate falls to 7.8 pct., 44-month low", to nobody's amazement, the Obama Administration paradoxically reports that the unemployment rate "declined from 8.1 percent because the number of people who said they were employed soared by 873,000", even though out of the other side of their mouths they report that employers added only 114,000 jobs.  To explain the colossal disconnect in those numbers, it's important to understand two things:

 

- First, the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) does not count actual jobs created and lost; they do surveys and report what people tell them.  This leaves the validity of the numbers at the mercy of the sampling process.

 

- Second, the size of that survey sample is around 60,000 households, ironic in that the article stated unequivocally that 873,000 people told them they were now magically employed.

 

These are the reasons the Obama Administration can constantly cook the books, and is the basis for a 2.2% "drop" in unemployment in the past three years, even though 23 million have been reported as unemployed or underemployed in that time.  But let's take the Obama administration's logic at face value: If 114,000 new jobs causes the unemployment rate to drop .2%, then a measly 4.5 million jobs created will drop the unemployment rate to 0%, which would - by his reasoning - cause 18.5 million folks with no jobs to cease to exist.

 

The real source of amazement is the willingness of the Media to report these numbers - month after month - with a straight face, particularly since this is the last employment poll before the election.  I wait with bated breath for the Chronicle Editorial section to express some skepticism.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

the Real Cause Of The Problem

Re: "Is justice system in U.S. truly colorblind?" (Tuesday City & State), Lisa Falkenberg largely accepts the premise of author Michelle Alexander that the incarceration of black men is caused only by white racism, and then goes on to exclusively cite the "compelling" statistics provided by Alexander to prove it. Except of course, that the statistics are a tired rehash of Liberal demagoguery going back at least 40 years.

For the most part, the basic statistics themselves are not in dispute: black men are disproportionately represented as a percentage of people accused of, convicted and sentenced for drug crimes. What is seriously in dispute are the reasons as to why, and the contention that black males are no more likely to engage in drug crime than others. For Alexander and Falkenberg, the issue is Black and White: institutional white racism in our criminal justice system is the cause, period, end of statement. Nowhere in the narrative they weave is there room for any other explanation. Let me offer a few that thoughtful conservatives have been putting forth for generations:
 

- Marriage is near-extinct in the Black community.

 

- Less than 40% of black men grow up with a father in their home.

 

- We are now up to three generations of institutionalized welfare dependency for the majority of black youth in our cities.

 

- Less than 1/3rd of black men who drop out of high school in their 20s are employed.

 

- The most prominent cultural influence on young black men is the Thug Life, which glorifies crime, gangs and violence, primarily through Rap music.

 

It is worth noting that the problems with illegitimacy, missing fathers, welfare dependency and dropouts all preceded the mass incarceration of black men, and it is more than plausible that these pathologies are the major cause of the incarceration problem. As to Alexander's claim that black males are disproportionately imprisoned, even she would have to admit that the concentration of America's drug culture is in our big cities, where blacks are a disproportionate percentage of the populace. It is also more than plausible that these problems were exacerbated by the well-meaning social policies implemented and executed largely by Liberals, since the bulk of our big cities came under the political control of the Democratic Party in the 60s, and remain so to this day.

 

As to the timing of the issue, the War On Drugs did not "begin" with the Reagan Administration in any meaningful sense, including the incarceration of black men. It actually began with the Johnson Administration with the creation of agencies specifically devoted to fighting drug crime, and the passage of the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act in 1970 under Nixon. The Reagan Administration did formalize the imposition of mandatory sentences, but federal convictions represent only a small percentage of all drug convictions, and the criminal justice policies implemented in the 60s and 70s are far more responsible for the high imprisonment rate.

 

Bottom line, the majority of young black males are dysfunctional before they get caught up in crime, and the bulk of those have embraced the Thug Life long before they get caught up in the Drug Life. This isn't the first time that the "institutionalized white racism" argument has been trotted out to explain away the failures of Liberal policies, and it won't be the last. But until these realities are embraced by Liberal apologists, there will be no improvement in the Black condition.

Pete Smith
Cypress