Coyote Blog

I don't have a problem with someone who has had a bankruptcy in the past.  Bankruptcy is not some Scarlet B that should ruin one for life.  Ideally, its bad enough that folks should want to avoid it but forgiving enough that people can move on and get a fresh start.  Via TJIC

"¦ moderator Tim Russert asked former senator Mike Gravel about Gravel's
somewhat troubled financial history. A condominium business started by
Gravel went bankrupt, and Gravel himself once declared personal
bankruptcy. "How can someone who did not take care of his business,
could not manage his personal finances, say that he is capable of
managing the country?" Russert asked.

Here would be my answer:  "Bankruptcy does not necessarily mean that one has managed finances poorly or that one is somehow guilty of malfeasance.  It can mean those things, but it can also mean that one took a risk on a business vision, did the best job possible, but the vision turned out to somehow be wrong.  Some of the greatest names in American business backed Internet ventures that went bankrupt.  Some were just poorly managed, but many just made poor bets as to what would and would not work over the internet.  When people look at Enron, they assume that there must have been malfeasance for the company to go bankrupt.  And while folks were indeed breaking some laws there, those actions had nothing to do with Enron's bankruptcy.  Enron died because they made some huge bets on things like broadband that didn't pan out."

Here, in contrast, is Gravel's response:

"Well, first off, if you want to make a judgment of who can be the
greediest people in the world when they get to public office, you can
just look at the people up here," Gravel said in a nod to his fellow
candidates.

"Now, you say the condo business," he continued. "I
will tell you, Donald Trump has been bankrupt 100 times. So I went
bankrupt once in business.

Doesn't this guy sound like some overweight guy wearing a wife-beater and sitting in his trailer with a cheap beer watching a baseball game on his old black and white TV, railing against all the rich guys that never gave him a chance?  But the best is yet to come:

who did I bankrupt? I stuck the credit card companies with $90,000 worth of bills, and they deserved it "“ "

People in the audience began to laugh.

"They
deserved it," Gravel repeated, "and I used the money to finance the
empowerment of the American people with a national initiative."

That sound you hear is the dying gasps of individual responsibility.  And what the hell is that last part about "empowerment of the American people?"  Sounds like Gravel is channeling Lee Hunsacker.

Via TJIC, really needs no comment:

As many of my readers know, we run over 200 recreation facilities across the country, from Washington to Florida.  This experience of serving nearly a million customers a year has yielded some odd insights.  One of the ones I published before is that the far-and-away worst litterers in the country are Southern Californians and LA residents in particular, California-eco-speak notwithstanding. 

Another observation we have made is that many times our most difficult customers turn out to be law enforcement officers.  I'm not talking about all of them - the vast majority of law enforcement officers are friendly, peaceful campers.  But when we have an incident of a customer refusing to follow the rules and wanting privileges no one else gets, like-as-not the customer is a law enforcement officer of some sort.  For example, we have had an off duty law-enforcement officer pay for one campsite, and then spread his stuff out over three, and refuse to limit himself to one site or pay for the other two he was using.   We have had off-duty law enforcement officers who had their car towed because it was parked for four hours in a tow-away zone, and then had their on-duty friends show up (well out of their jurisdiction) and interrogate our managers and otherwise harass them in retribution.  Heck, we have biker gangs come through that are more respectful of authority than certain off-duty law enforcement officers.

This irritating little site (HT: Hit and Run) possibly explains some things for me.  The site is apparently run by cops and is aimed at criticizing cops who do not extend other officers "professional courtesy"  which apparently is a euphemism for "allow them to break the rules with impunity."  Police officers who actually have the temerity to enforce the rules on other police officers are singled out as "dicks."  Maybe I understand why some of our police officer customers are not accustomed to having to follow the same rules as everyone else.

...you equate the government choosing not to provide a service with that service being banned.  Michael Cannon quotes our Speaker of the House:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's understanding of government's role in a
liberal democracy (and of the veto power) may be worse than I thought. A reporter sends a transcript of a press conference that Pelosi held yesterday, where she made the following remarks:

Oh, [President Bush] used the veto pen to veto the stem
cell research bill.  That was a major disappointment. . . . I remember
that veto very well because he was saying, "I forbid science to proceed
to improve the health of the American people."

Regarding Bush's threatened veto of the Democrats' expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program:

The President is saying, "I forbid 10 million children
in America to have health care." You know from your Latin that is what
"veto" means.

Pelosi should know that there is a difference between the government not funding something and forbidding it.

I am not at all clear why the Congress needs to take a formal vote on a resolution condemning a legal act of free speech by American citizens.  Yeah, I get the politics of this move.  But can't they focus on more important issues, like approving official national days for obscure vegetables.

Like most of the Democratic presidential candidates, Obama has proposed a real mess in the place of coherent tax policy.   Chris Edwards has a first look.  No real surprises - more taxes on the productive, more handouts to key Democratic voting blocks.

Not surprising, but certainly sickening:

They [the PMA GROUP]  sank $1,333,074 into the campaigns last year of 3
Democratic members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee and
walked away with $100.5 million in defense earmarks for PMA clients,
Roll Call reported.

That means for every buck they spent, their clients got back $75.39. In less than 1 year.

The 3 Democratic rent-to-own congressmen are John
Murtha, Jim Moran and Peter Visclosky. These antiwar Democrats see
nothing wrong with steering military money to PMA clients.

And why not? PMA money made up 20% of Murtha's war
chest, 18% of the Moran money and 33% of the Visclosky dough. For 2008,
PMA already has steered $542,500 to the 3 amigos.

Related thoughts from Radley Balko:

So I guess once you're elected to Congress, you're immune from drunk driving laws; you can stash the evidence that you've committed a crime in your office, because investigators aren't allowed to search it; if you kill someone because you've got a lead foot and blew a stop sign, the taxpayers will cover your financial liability; and, we learn today, you can commit whatever Internet-related crimes you please, because the police aren't allowed to search your computer.   

Meanwhile, the same  Congress that has immunized itself from much of the law is also responsible for the ever-expanding federal criminal code, which we can thank for our shamefully enormous and still-soaring prison population, which is by far and away the largest in the world. 

You
have lawmakers who feel they're above the law. And who at the same time
are criminalizing anything and everything they find tacky, repugnant,
or immoral.

The media has built an image through shows like Dynasty and Dallas of private companies being battlegrounds for petty feuds and revenge plots, all played out with little concern for the actual performance of the business.  While I suppose that such things do happen, I have worked in a lot of large companies and have seen a lot of stupid stuff, but I have never seen the pettiness you will find in the average government office:

In his first day as DA, Nifong had fired a longtime rival, Freda Black.
She quickly made clear her intent to run in 2006. Well-known from her
work in a high-profile murder trial, Black soon became the
front-runner. Nifong knew that Black would fire him, as he had fired
her, the first chance she got. His concern, he told his initial
campaign manager, Jackie Brown, was not that he cared about being DA;
he needed another three years in the Durham DA's office for his pension
to fully vest.

Ooh, I am in charge, now I can seek revenge on all the people I don't like.  How petty can you get?  Its absolutely assumed here that the first thing a newcomer will do is fire all the people who have rubbed them the wrong way over the years, without regard to performance or capability.  And we want to make these folks our masters?

I hesitated to even post this link, because if you haven't been following the Rack & Roll / Manassas Park story for a while, it is so rich and convoluted that it's almost impossible to catch up.  Like starting to watch the Sopranos in the sixth season.  But Radley Balko has a long update.

Here is the short answer.  A group of folks in Manassas Park, VA, both in and out of the town government, want to take the land where the Rack & Roll pool club and bar sits for a lucrative off-track betting establishment.  As part of that effort, they have worked to deny the owner his liquor license and his business license.  The town has also harassed the club with numerous over-the-top raids, including a full-on 60-man SWAT raid.  The town has in the past tried to portray the club as a haven for drug dealing, in part by having police pay the club's bouncer to allow and/or encourage drug deals on the property and then tip police to them.

The owner has been standing up for himself, and has taken to video-taping the premises at all times and recording interviews with employees and customers.  A lot of the back story is here, start at the bottom.

In this most recent update, the owner addresses the other major charge being used to pull his licenses -- that he allowed lewd behavior on site, specifically girls flashing their boobs on the dance floor.  He has impressive evidence that he threw out anyone he caught doing so, and instructed his other employees to do the same.  In fact, the flashing seems to have occurred when the owner was not present, and was led and encouraged and photographed by the club's DJ.  Ironically, the DJ is the Manassas Park vice-mayor.  So the town is trying to shut the club down for activities opposed by the club's owner but encouraged by the town's own official.  Bizarre.  Now the town finds itself the proud owner of a file of soft-core child pornography, in the form of pictures from the club taken by their vice-Mayor of topless girls, several of whom may have been under-age  (apparently VA law allows under-age patrons as long as they are not served alcohol).

Henry Payne has an interesting tidbit:  The government is now concerning itself with what cars its employees purchase.

Your tax dollars at work. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week sent an email urging its 67,000 employees not to buy SUVs, lecturing that fuel efficiency should be their "top priority" when buying a car.

 

"Every
new sport utility vehicle on the road produces 60 percent more climate
threatening CO2 emissions than a smaller vehicle," said Energy News,
a quarterly newsletter from a department that has nothing to do with
energy, but everything to do with energy morality apparently.

 

"The
toll that vehicles take on the environment includes air pollution, oil
spills, pollution of our water supplies, and damage to natural
habitats," continues the HHS sermon. "In order to really cut CO2
emissions, higher fuel efficiency in all vehicles will be essential."

American auto makers were not amused by the recommendation to buy Toyotas or Hondas. 

This surprises me not at all.  A few weeks ago, I had an EPA audit of a marina and store I operate in Colorado (the report in all its glory is here).  In that audit, the Environmental Protection Agency recommended that we begin selling fair trade coffee in our store.  What that has to do with emissions into the lake, I have no idea.  They also recommended that I put an environmental message on our shopping bags, replacing the current boating safety message.  The audit did say that they could not require these two things.  Well, give them some time, they will probably make it a requirement soon.

So where do government bureaucrats go to learn how to push the frontiers of mindless rules enforcement?   Well, there are certain enclaves of the private sector who are pretty good at strict enforcement of silly rules -- The RIAA comes to mind.  But where do leading brain-dead bureaucracies, like say, school boards, learn to push the frontiers of pettiness?  Perhaps the NCAA can help out:

Just hours after Oklahoma football recruit Herman Mitchell was shot to
death Friday in Houston, Adam Fineberg started raising money for
Mitchell's family.

But after raising $4,500, enough to cover almost half the cost of
Mitchell's funeral, Fineberg stopped. An OU compliance officer told him
his actions would constitute an NCAA rules violation against the
Sooners.

Now, Mitchell's mother likely will never receive that money.

That money is considered illegal financial assistance under NCAA
rules because Mitchell's brother is a sophomore fullback at Westfield
High School in Spring, Texas, and because Fineberg is an OU fan who
attends Sooner football games and solicited donations through an OU fan
Web site. [. . .]

OU spokesman Kenny Mossman said the an official with the
university's compliance office contacted Fineberg on Monday asking to
him halt his fundraising efforts until the OU received a rules
interpretation from the NCAA. That interpretation came Tuesday.

"This is not a permissible expense for OU or someone who could be
construed as an OU supporter," said Mossman, an associate athletic
director for communications. "We're not trying to be the bad guys, but
we have to play by their rules."

Because it's still a recruiting violation, even if the recruit is dead.  The NCAA said the college could apply for a waiver.  They shouldn't even have to -- the NCAA's reaction should have been to issue a waiver without even being asked.  This should have taken a conference call among the key decision-makers about 8 seconds to decide.

Update:  I may have been wrong by putting the NCAA over school boards, as a Colorado Springs school board has banned playing tag.  So I guess smear the queer is out (we actually called it Kill the Man with the Ball, but I am told that Smear the Queer is the more common and even less politically correct name).

This, via Reason, is interesting in the context of my post last week on English being a bottom-up language without an official government arbiter (emphasis added):

To the consternation of some nickname purists, children
are being given such offbeat English-language nicknames as Mafia or
Seven "” as in 7-Eleven, the convenience store.

With help from
language experts at the Royal Institute, the official arbiter of the
Thai language, Mr. Vira plans to produce by the end of the year a
collection of thousands of old-fashioned nicknames, listed by such
wholesome categories as colors, animals and fruit and including simple
favorites like Yaay (big), Ouan (fat) and Dam (black).

Korakoad
Wongsinchai, an English teacher at a private primary school in Bangkok,
is also not sure whether the Culture Ministry's campaign will stem the
tide of English names...More than half of her students have English
names, she said, offering this sampling: Tomcruise, Elizabeth, Army,
Kiwi, Charlie and God.

Today, the world is a safer place.  Federal Agents from the Department of Homeland Security have siezed my Crest toothpaste.  You can all fly safely now.

Update:  Hey, I have an idea.  The airplane liquids ban makes so much sense, let's promote its author to Attorney General.  Nothing says "able to make clear-headed choices on tradeoffs between security and civil rights" like the liquids ban.  4oz - safe.  4.2 oz - security threat.

Apparently, we taxpayers gaurantee $645 billion in flood insurance so wealthy folks can build second homes on the beech, and have them wash away every few years at taxpayer expense.  USAToday, breaking from general habit, actually criticized a government giveaway in this article.  But I think that the John Stossel article linked by Q&O is better  (Memo to ABC web guys -- your articles stay online for years so it might be nice to add a year to that date in the byline).  Stossel points out that the tab for flood insurance understates the beachfront subsidy:  Costs for FEMA, disaster relief, Corps of Engineers projects, beech erosion abatement, etc. all are also government subsidies for living in dangerous locations.

But the outrage is that federal flood insurance exists at all. There is
a quarter-million-dollar limit on each payment, and as long as I build
my house in accordance with zoning laws and ordinances, there is no
limit on how many times the government will pay if a house keeps
washing away

Via Cato and IBD:

Sen. Hillary Clinton says she wants to establish a national academy
that will train public servants. Why do re-education camps come to
mind? "¦ Somehow we doubt there will be many lectures in making
government smaller, deregulating business, cutting taxes or increasing
individual freedom. Is there a chance that this "new generation"
attending the academy will hear a single voice that isn't hailing the
glories of the nanny state? Will students being groomed for public
service ever hear the names Hayek, von Mises or Friedman during their
studies? "¦ Government at all levels is already overflowing with
bureaucrats who suck up taxpayers' money and produce little, if
anything, of economic value. More often, the bureaucracy actually gets
in the way of economic progress.

This way, government employees can know absolutely nothing about the real world or productive enterprise, and never have to be burdened with listening to anyone in school who doesn't think government is the be-all end-all, kind of like, uh, Hillary Clinton.

This weekend, the Democrats in Congress passed legislation legalizing the Administration's previous grab for new wiretapping powers.  Further proving that the minority party in the US government does not really object to power grabs, they just get in a huff that the other party thought of it first.  Other examples of such behavior include the Patriot act, currently supported by Republicans and opposed by many Democrats, but most of whose provisions were originally proposed by Bill Clinton and opposed by a Republican Congress  (opposition led by John Ashcroft!)

I really don't want the president, of either party, listening to my phone calls without a warrant, and that answer does not change if I am talking  to my friends in Arizona or my friends in London.

John Scalzi has a great post reacting to the line in the article above where Democrats vow to, at some time in the future, "fix" the flaws in the law they just passed.

They wouldn't have to "fix" it if they hadn't have passed it.
Once again I am entirely flummoxed how it is that the Democrats, faced
with the president more chronically unpopular than Nixon, and so
politically weakened that the GOP candidates for president can barely
bring themselves to acknowledge that he exists, yet manage to get played by the man again and again.

If the Democrats honestly did not feel this version of the bill
should have been passed, they shouldn't have passed it. I don't see why
this is terribly complicated. And don't tell me that at least it has a
six-month "sunset" clause; all it means at this point is that in six
months, the Democrats are going to allow themselves to get played once
more, and this time they'll have given Bush the talking point of "well,
they passed it before."

My only objection to this statement is the implication the this is just a matter of the Democrats getting played.  I actually think it's exactly what the Democrats want -- they want to retain a reputation for caring about government intrusiveness without actually reducing government powers (just like Republicans want a reputation for reducing economic regulations without actually doing do when they were in power).  After all, the Dems expect to control the administration in 2 years, and they really don't want to take away any of the President's toys before that time.

The average federal worker now makes over twice the wages and benefits of the average private worker. 

Maybe they have some sort of incentive plan, receiving a percentage of the value they have personally destroyed.  Because sure as hell none of them are producing anything.  If the Democrats want to fight income inequality and take on excessive compensation that is set without oversight, I might suggest beginning with the federal government. 

Postscript: TJIC has pointed out that he and I, though we tend to agree, often express ourselves differently.  Here is my prediction of TJIC's response to this article:  "We going to need a lot more rope."  How's that, Travis?

Over a decade ago, the German government adopted the goal of reducing the country's CO2 emissions back to 1990 levels as part of the Kyoto process.  That's why its incredible to me that after spending billions on various goofy and questionable conservation and alternative energy programs, someone has finally thought to maybe stop massively subsidizing coal production.

For decades, German lawmakers have propped up the industry,
unwilling to risk massive layoffs and reluctant to eliminate a reliable
energy source as gas and oil supplies become scarcer.

But after spending more than $200 billion in subsidies since the
1960s, the federal government this year decided that the practice had
become unaffordable. The 2018 sunset for the hard-coal industry was set.

Economists and free-market lawmakers have long decried the subsidies
as handouts to the politically influential coal industry and powerful
trade unions. This year, for instance, Deutsche Steinkohle AG, the
owner of the remaining eight mines, will receive more in government
subsidies ($3.3 billion) than it will from selling coal ($2.9 billion).

With just 32,000 miners left, that's the equivalent of more than $100,000 in annual subsidies per worker.

I don't know what is more incredible -- $100,000 per worker or the fact that subsidies actually are larger than revenue from coal sales.  In effect, the government is subsidizing more than half of coal's production costs.

Sometimes we in the US forget just how insane the economy in Europe can be.  I remember doing a consulting project for the French national railroad, the SNCF.   It turned out the SNCF, for it's 100,000 freight cars had ... 125,000 freight car maintenance workers.  The headcount number was so insane I had to check it three times to make sure it was right.  I commented at the time that they could assign one car repair worker full time to each freight car, and have him ride around with that car full time, and still cut staffing by 20%.

Phil Miller observes that the new Hawkeye football coach is now the highest-paid government employee in Iowa.  This is wildly unsurprising.  In fact, I renew my question that we never got a final answer on:  Is there any state in which a college athletics coach is NOT the highest paid public employee in the state?

Update:  Tim, who has a blog at Movementarian.com writes with lots more thoughts:

Being from Texas I tried to find some numbers on your question:

- David Lopez, chief executive of the Harris County Hospital
District, has agreed to a three-year deal that could pay him $500,000
annually and would make him the highest-paid county employee.    (
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4986829.html)

 

- Already, the retirement system's chief investment officer, Britt
Harris, is the highest-paid state employee (excluding higher-education
officials and athletic coaches, whose pay isn't tracked by the
comptroller's office). Harris earns a base salary of $480,000 and is
eligible for a maximum bonus of $360,000.  (
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/finance/entries/2007/06/15/bonus_babies_part_i_1.html
)

Other State's

Nevada: Public employees who repair Nevada's local streets and
highways, operate its city and county jails and fill nonteaching jobs
in its school districts are the best paid in the country when compared
with their counterparts in the other 49 states and the District of
Columbia, according to U.S. Census figures for 2001.  (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/May-18-Sun-2003/news/21349243.html)

 

New York: Alain Kaloyeros, vice president and chief administrative
officer at the College of Nanoscale science and Engineering and an
expert in the field of nanotechnology, became the highest paid employee
after the State University of New York (SUNY) chancellor approved a
$142,000 per year raise, bringing his annual salary to $666,995, the
Associated Press reports. (
http://compensation.blr.com/display.cfm/id/155584)

However, based on football coaches in Texas alone (most of whom
make more than $1 mil), none of these other employees come close (just
as you predicted).  Even college basketball coaches are making alot of
money now.  In fact, before A&M's Gillespie bolted to Kentucky, he
was offered $1.75 million a year, up from $500k: (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2832406) -- his replacement, Mark Turgeon, signed a deal worth $1.2 million/year.

 

Hell, even highschool football coaches make more than most other public employees:
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:LIgABghniwwJ:www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/highschool/08/27salary.html+In+dollars,+coaches+beat+teachers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

 

Note: this is one of the better articles covering this issue: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2006-11-16-coaches-salaries-cover_x.htm

 

Regarding the Nevada example above, UN basketball coach is raking in more dough than any of those employees as well: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2912916

 

And for the record, I think the coaches that get a cut of ticket
revenues are in a conflict of interest, due to the fact that more than
90% of Div I schools fund athletics departments through student fees (
http://www.mises.org/story/2233#fn6)
and their sport typically get a large amount of promotion through
by the institution.  Then again, the entire collegiate enterprise is
backwards to begin with...

I have written before that the government story of the next decade will be the financial meltdown that will ensue as state and local governments are forced to face up to the enormous unfunded pension and medical liabilities they have assumed for their state employees.  Largely, these liabilities are currently well-hidden and off the books, a trick even Jeff Skilling was unable to pull off at Enron. 

My previous prediction that the liabilities probably total over a trillion dollars now seems way low.  Just one state, Illinois, may have over $100 billion in such off-the-books liabilities, and this does not even include liabilities of local authorities like the city of Chicago:

The study puts the state's pension debt at $10 billion, its unfunded
pension costs at $46 billion, its unfunded employee health care costs
at $48 billion, and its unpaid Medicaid bills at $2 billion. The total
costs that will be pushed onto tomorrow's taxpayers without reforms is
an enormous $106 billion, or $8,800 per every person in the state of
Illinois.

At the exact same time that the President and the Congress have the lowest approval ratings of all time, consumer confidence just hit a 6-year high.  While we all understand the power of the government to screw up the economy, has there ever been quite so eloquent an expression of just how irrelevant the government is to economic expansion?

I just finished a course on the history of Rome.  The most fascinating era was the Roman revolution, where over about 100 years Rome slid from a Republic to an autocracy.  The final phases of the era, with the Caesars, gets a lot of play in movies and such, but it is actually the early period I found the most interesting.  In effect, Caesar or someone like him was effectively inevitable by that point in time.  The chance to avoid such an outcome actually came a hundred years earlier.

I won't get into the whole history, but suffice it to say that there was a major difference in the Republic between the theoretical power of certain offices and the actual power.  In effect, certain offices could theoretically take some pretty radical actions, but they were circumscribed by tradition and precedent.  However, when these precedents were broken (interestingly by a man who felt he was doing it for a good cause) restraints were removed and politics tended to devolve.

A while back, I wrote a post saying that I would love to see impeachment hearings in the Senate, because it would prevent the Senate from getting anything else done and it would be enormously entertaining. 

I take it back.  Having thought some more about it, I now think that it would be a really bad idea.   Impeachment has always been a power that could be used any time, but was not because the Congress generally recognized that restraint was in order.  The impeachment of Clinton broke with this tradition.  Yes, I know, he lied under oath.  Fine, yank his law license after he leaves office.  Yes, it probably was technically an impeachable offense.  But it falls way, way short of the line that historic precedent has set for when impeachment is appropriate.  And by greatly lowering this line, the Republican Congress took the huge risk of opening the floodgates to impeachment hearings virtually every time the President and Congressional majorities were from opposite parties.

I really would like to see the Democrats exercise restraint here.  I know many libertarians disagree with me, and would love nothing more than to see more frequent impeachments and recalls;  unfortunately, I just don't think that solves the libertarian problem of reducing the power and scope of government.

I don't want to misinterpret Kevin Drum, but he seems to be making a similar plea.  To M.J. Rosenburg, who argues:

The Constitutional remedy of impeachment is no longer
what it once was. For better or worse, the Republicans changed it, for
all time, when they impeached Clinton over, essentially, nothing.

And Clinton changed it as well. Impeachment not only did not end his
Presidency; it did not hurt his standing with the public. His numbers
stayed high, even improved some, and he left office on schedule, a very
popular President.

In other words, impeachment is no longer the political nuclear bomb
it once was, especially if one knows in advance that conviction and
removal from office is unlikely to occur.

Accordingly, impeachment proceedings are essentially the best means
of getting information to the public which is otherwise unavailable.

To this Drum says:

Impeachment should become a routine tool for getting public attention
whenever we disagree with a president of the opposite party? This might
be the worst argument in favor of impeachment of all time.

I agree.  I think Rosenburg is right that the Clinton impeachment changed the precedents around impeachment, but I would like to see the cork put back in the bottle now, before it is too late.

Eliot Spitzer has been caught using the power of his office to go after his enemies.  Wow, what a surprise.  Frequent readers of this blog will know I don't think much of Spitzer, who tended to overreach his office all the way back to student government at Princeton.  What I found surprising, though, was this quote from the NY Times:

The report was a blow to Mr. Spitzer, a former prosecutor who came into
office less than seven months ago with a reputation for integrity and
who promised to bring a new ethical climate to Albany.

A reputation for integrity with whom?  Mr. Spitzer, as attorney general, was a sort of liberal bookend to George W. Bush, consistently exceeding the limits of his authority to achieve some goal he argued trumped a narrow reading of the law.  His supporters, just as Bush's do, justify his overreaching his office on the grounds that the ends justified the means, in Spitzer's case the assault on various corporate and Wall Street firms liberals were frustrated that Washington would not pursue.  Critics like myself argued that many of his crusades were abuses of his prosecutorial office to pursue personal vendetta's and to generate headlines to position himself for a run for governor.

I would think that any reasonable definition of "integrity" when applied to an attorney general would include a respect for the letter of the law, something that even his supporters would probably admit Spitzer cast aside when he thought it was for a good cause.  The only interpretation of "integrity" I can come up with in the context of this article is that Spitzer had integrity in the past because his abuses of power were in pursuit of causes the author agreed with.

Look, this is the man that began supporting campaign finance limitations, which tend to support incumbents, starting the day after he became an incumbent.  This is the man who described himself as governor thus:  "I
am a fucking steamroller and I'll roll over you or anybody else".  This is the man who involved the State of New York and the courts in a private compensation deal, just to burnish his populist credentials.  In the latter trial, he explicitly left prominent Democrats who had the most involvement with the deal alone and indicted side figures who were Republicans.  Tom Kirkendall has a much longer bill of particulars against Spitzer here.

As the DOJ's Corporate Fraud Task Force pats itself on the back for the great job it is doing, Tom Kirkendall rips them up in a scathing rebuttal.  I encourage you to follow the links -- he has great depth on every point he makes.

As the DOJ's Corporate Fraud Task Force pats itself on the back for the great job it is doing, Tom Kirkendall rips them up in a scathing rebuttal.  I encourage you to follow the links -- he has great depth on every point he makes.