Coyote Blog

A government job can be a great deal.  Likely it pays more than a comparable private job, it's generally impossible to get fired from, and it has outrageously good medical and pension plans.  And, if you don't shy away from a bit of perjury, can be made to pay off spectacularly:

During the workweek, it is not uncommon to find retired L.I.R.R. [Long Island Railroad]
employees, sometimes dozens of them, golfing there. A few even walk the
course. Yet this is not your typical retiree outing.

These
golfers are considered disabled. At an age when most people still work,
they get a pension and tens of thousands of dollars in annual
disability payments "” a sum roughly equal to the base salary of their
old jobs. Even the golf is free, courtesy of New York State taxpayers.

With  incentives like these, occupational disabilities at the L.I.R.R. have become a full-blown epidemic.

Virtually
every career employee "” as many as 97 percent in one recent year "”
applies for and gets disability payments soon after retirement, a
computer analysis of federal records by The New York Times has found.
Since 2000, those records show, about a quarter of a billion dollars in
federal disability money has gone to former L.I.R.R. employees,
including about 2,000 who retired during that time.

97 percent?  Wow!  And just to demonstrate that year was not some kind of outlier:

In each year since 2000, between 93 percent and 97 percent of employees
over 50 who retired with 20 years of service also received disability
payments.

The article goes on to demonstrate that this is occurring at what appears, from the injury statistics, to be one of the safest railroads in the area.  Say what you will about the NY Times, but when they get their teeth into local corruption they can still do a masterful job, as evidenced by this long article discussing many apparently ridiculous payroll situations at the LIRR.

I can say from experience that there is a group of people in this country for whom getting a lifetime disability payment (e.g. from the Social Security Administration) is as good as hitting the lottery.  I remember one time I got a survey form from the SSA asking about a former employee.  I didn't pay much attention to the form's purpose as I filled it out -- I get all kinds of such government wastepaper with breathless admonishments about the urgency of my reply.  Anyway, about 2 weeks later I got a very threatening letter from the attorney for this former employee, threatening me with all kinds of dire consequences if I did not immediately retract my (honest) answers to the SSA inquiry.  Apparently, I was endangering a lifetime disability determination that this person had been working on obtaining for years. 

Every day, in fact, I get job applicants who try to cut deals with me of one sort or another (e.g. can you pay me under the table in cash?) because they say they are fully able to do outdoor maintenance work but they can't show any income because it might endanger their lifetime disability payments.  In a similar vein, I have three cases I know of in my company today where workers filed workman's compensation claims of injury several days after they were terminated.

I've said it before, but the reckoning is coming on state and local government pensions, which in most cases are unfunded, undisclosed liabilities of startling magnitude.  The disaster that is fast approaching in these state and local government finances will make Social Security's problems look pitiful by comparison.

Postscript:  Railroad labor law is just weird and a total mess.  Being the first major industry, and the first major industry that was regulated, a whole regulatory structure was put in place for railroads that (fortunately) has been applied to few other industries.  Whatever the problems we have with state workman's comp programs, they are models of governance compared to how things work in the railroad industry.

For example, I remember when I worked for a railroad in the 1990's, carpel tunnel claims were common.  By the nature of the comp system, workers got cash payments for injuries in addition to medical treatment (I recall a figure at the time of $7500 per wrist for carpel tunnel, but that may be off).  It was a common piece of advice among railroad workers that if one wanted to get the money together for a down-payment on a new pickup truck, one only had to go to Dr. X or Y and get a carpel tunnel diagnosis.

I am here in Green Bay checking off another item on my sports bucket list: seeing a game at Lambeau Field.  And it should be a really good one. 

We went out last night on the town to various bars, mostly on Washington street, after a ritual visit to "fuzzy's."  (Packers fans can tell me later if we were on the right track with these choices).  My friend (who lives in DC) and I were shocked to pay only $2 a beer at the first bar we were at.  It turned out that this was virtual price gouging in the local market.  We never paid more the rest of the evening than $1 for a mug of draft, on a Saturday night yet.  Yet another good reason to stay off the coasts.

For the record, Green Bay is really a very nice, tidy little town.  Kind of quiet, like many small towns -- they set all the traffic lights to flashing yellow last night about 8PM.  The only difference between it and any other nice midwestern town is that every single business has "packers" in its name somehow and roughly 30% of the population at any one time is wearing something with "FAVRE" on the back.  Who is this Favre guy?  I thought he played in New York  ;=)

I suspect many of my readers also read Megan McArdle, but in case you missed her story, its pretty funny (as long as you are not the person experiencing it):

While consuming my one (1) beer, I was apprehended by agents of the
Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.  They called my parents, fined me,
and made me attend a class on the horrors of underaged drinking (did
you realize that drinking can lead to uncontrollable vomiting?)  It was
during that class, with the errors of my ways now readily apparent,
that I made a pledge to myself to quit underaged drinking with all due
speed.  And on January 29th, 1994, I honored that pledge....

The
problem, you see, is that at the time of my conviction, I did not have
a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Driver's License.  Indeed, I had no
driver's license at all, being one of those benighted city people who
get their first driver's license at the age of 23.  The laws of the
State of Pennsylvania, however, say that the Department of
Transportation is entitled to suspend the driver's license of anyone
arrested for underaged drinking.  And the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Department of Transportation is, apparently, determined to exercise
this privilege.  Thus, the spectacle of a 35 year old woman being
informed that she is about to have her driver's license suspended for
underaged drinking.

To add insult to injury, I am expected to
fill out a form and, at my own expense, mail it to the DOT in order to
commence this suspension.

This would be funny and mildly
annoying if it were not for the fact that until they clear the
suspension, I cannot get a DC driver's license, because states are
required to scan for violations from other states before they issue a
new license.  (No word on how I got one out of the State of New York).
And until I get a DC driver's license, I cannot register the car I just
bought.  The DMV here, after much wrangling, gave me temporary tags,
but it looks like I'm going to have to garage the thing for three
months unless the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania relents.  Which, at this
time, they show no evidence of doing.

I generally have a bet I make for new light (and heavy) commuter rail systems.  I bet that for the amount the system cost to build, every single daily rider could have instead been given a Prius to drive for the same money; and, with the operating losses and/or subsidy the system requires each year, every one of those Prius drivers could be given enough gas to make their daily commute.  And still have money left over.  I have tested this bet for the systems in Los Angeles and Albuquerque.

Well, it turns out I left something out.  Many people are interested in commuter rail because it is perceived to be greener, which nowadays generally means narrowly that it uses less energy and thus produces less CO2.  But in fact, it may not.  Blogger John Moore sent me a link to this article by Brad Templeton analyzing energy usage in various transportation modes.  While a full train can be fairly efficient (just as a full SUV could be if 7 passengers were in it), cars and trains and busses are seldom full.  When you look at their average load factors, trains are seldom better than cars:

In fact, a car at its average load factor (1.57 pax) has about the same energy use as busses or light rail per passenger mile.  The analysis is difficult to do well, but even with errors, its clear that rail projects do not dominate over car travel in terms of energy use  (One must be careful to differentiate rail project construction decisions from individual choice of mode decisions -- an individual at the margin shifting from car to train saves a lot of energy;  a city choosing to invest in a large new rail system to entice drivers off the road does not).

In fact, relevent to my bet, Mr. Templeton says this:

My first conclusion is that we would get more efficient by pushing
small, fuel efficient vehicles instead of pushing transit, and at
a lower cost.

He explains his results, which are counter-intuitive to many

A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars,
sometimes quite a bit more so.   But transit systems never consist
of nothing but full vehicles.   They run most of their day with light
loads.  The above calculations came from figures citing the
average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light
or heavy) holds 22.   If that seems low, remember that every packed
train at rush hour tends to mean a near empty train returning down
the track.

Transit vehicles also tend to stop and start a lot, which eats
a lot of energy, even with regenerative braking.   And most
transit vehicles are just plain heavy, and not very aerodynamic.
Indeed, you'll see tables in the DoE reports that show that over the past 30 years,
private cars have gotten 30% more efficient, while buses have
gotten 60% less efficient and trains about 25% worse.   The
market and government regulations have driven efforts to make cars
more efficient, while transit vehicles have actually worsened.

In order to get people to ride transit, you must offer frequent
service, all day long.  They want to know they have the freedom to leave at
different times.  But that means emptier vehicles outside of
rush hour.   You've all seen those huge empty vehicles go by, you just
haven't thought of how anti-green they were.    It would be better
if off-hours transit was done by much smaller vehicles, but that
implies too much capital cost -- no transit agency will buy enough
equipment for peak times and then buy a second set of equipment for
light demand periods.

A lot of his data can be checked at the US Department of Energy data book here.  In particular, you can see the key numbers in table 2.12.  After perusing this data for a bit, I had a few other reactions:

• Commercial air travel gets a bad rap.  On a passenger mile basis, it is really not worse than driving and only about 20% worse than Amtrack  (and probably the same as Amtrak or better if you leave out the Northeast Corridor). (table 2.14)
• Busses have really gotten way more inefficient over the years, at the same time cars have become substantially more efficient.  While the government criticizes its citizens for not practicing enough energy conservation, in fact its citizens have been buying more and more fuel efficient vehicles while the government has been buying less efficient vehicles.  (table 2.13)
• While passenger cars have increased substantially in efficiency, over the road trucks have seen no progress, and have actually gotten less efficient over the last 10 years (table 2-18)

Make sure to read the whole article.  I think the author is pretty fair at achnowleging where the uncertainties are in the analysis.  He also has comparisons of mass transit energy numbers between cities.  A few individual cities seem to beat even the most efficient cars -- most, including places like New York, do not.

Postscript:  I don't think numbers for New York include taxis.  If they did, New York would likely look terrible.  From an energy standpoint, taxis are a horrible transportation option, perhaps the worst possible.  It would be interesting to know how many New Yorkers who look down on SUV's routinely get around town using taxis.

One needs to be a careful consumer of information when reading about the "rated capacity" of certain alternative energy plants. 

Take a 1MW nuclear plant, run it for 24 hours, and you get 24 MW-hours, or something fairly close to that, of electricity.

Leave 1MW worth of solar panels out in the sun for 24 hours, you get much less total electricity, depending on where you put it.  On an average day in New York City, you will get about 4 MW-hours.  In one of the best solar sites in the word, my home of Phoenix, you get about 6.5 MW-hours per day.  The key metric is peak sun-hours per day, and some example figures are here.  So, even in the best solar sites in the world, solar panels run at only about 25-30% of capacity.

It turns out, not surprisingly, that the same relationship holds for wind.

It's not like it's a secret that wind turbines are an unreliable source of electrical power. Bryce points out that, "In
July 2006, for example, wind turbines in California produced power at
only about 10 percent of their capacity; in Texas, one of the most
promising states for wind energy, the windmills produced electricity at
about 17 percent of their rated capacity."

That means
that there has to be nuclear, coal-fired or natural gas power plants
functioning fulltime as a backup to the pathetically unreliable and
inefficient wind farms. Moreover, what electricity they do generate
is lost to some degree in the process of transmitting it over long
distances to distribution facilities.

Now, this should not outright dissuade us from these technologies, but since no one has really licked the night-time / not-windy storage proble, it's certainly an issue.   I have looked at solar for my house a number of times, and the numbers just are not there (even with up to 50% government subsidies!) without a 2-5x decrease in panel costs.  Low yields can potentially be tolerated, but capital costs are going to have to be a lot lower before they make a ton of sense.

I guess it turns out that compensation deals between sophisticated, consenting adults at private firms are not actually subject to approval by the NY attorney general, no matter how much he grandstands:

A state appeals court on Tuesday dealt a devastating blow to the New
York attorney general's efforts to force ex-New York Stock Exchange
Chairman Richard Grasso to return a portion of his $187.5 million
compensation package.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's
spokesman issued a statement saying he is not pursuing an appeal in the
case. The Grasso case is "over" "¦ "for all intents and purposes," the
spokesman said.

In a 3-1 decision, the New York Supreme Court's
Appellate Division dismissed the two remaining causes of actions
against Mr. Grasso and one against former NYSE director Ken Langone

I wrote much more about this fiasco long ago...

Update:  The AG argues that their real concern was about pay practice in non-profits.  OK, I am sure there are any number of NGOs and museum presidents where there might be real issues with the sophistication of board members.  Go after those folks, then, but there was never, ever any evidence that somehow Dick Grasso pulled the wool over the eyes of financial neophytes on the NYSE Board, babes in the woods such as the CEOs of JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.  Unfortunately, all these other non-profits tend to be run by folks who are the backbone of the NY Democratic Party.  Even in the Grasso suit, Spitzer had to work a bit to avoid naming prominent Democrats as targets.  For example, there is a lot of evidence that the person most responsible on the NYSE baord for the structure of Dick Grasso's compensation contract was NYSE board member and former NY State Comptroller Carl McCall, but since he is a powerful Democrat, Spitzer did some slick judo to avoid including him in the suit, which still including other NYSE board members.

I say a sign the other day at the airport that full-body millimeter-wave imaging was coming soon to the Phoenix airport.  I guess this was pretty inevitable, and has certainly been predicted in many movies, including Total Recall:

I can't really decide if this is any more invasive and humiliating than what we already do, ie get undressed, put our medications and creams in clear plastic bags for all to inspect, and subject ourselves to full-body pat downs.  For my part, based on this and numerous other humiliations, I am working as hard as I can to minimize how often I fly.  JD Tuccille has more, and observes that body cavity searches aren't just for airplanes any more:

If you think that air travel is starting to resemble a very-expensive
East Germany-nostalgia tour and you'd prefer a less-intrusive
alternative, you might consider traveling by train. Well, except, not
on Amtrak, which implemented random bag searches, armed guards and bomb-sniffing dogs earlier this year.

Even local travel is iffy, since New York City has been subjecting subway passengers to annoying searches for the past three years. Los Angeles's MetroLink implemented a similar policy this week, apparently just so officials there wouldn't feel left out. Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell told the Los Angeles Times

As a postscript, I had a meeting the other day with the National Park Service in Denver.  To get inside - remember this is the park service, no other agency shares this building - I had to give up my driver's license, have all my bags searched, and go through an X-ray machine.  Does anyone think that maybe we have lost some perspective when I have to go through full-on invasive security to discuss merchandising at a gift shop?

After digging a First Amendment hole for itself in the Plame affair, the New York Times seems to still be hell-bent on narrowing the very First Amendment protections that probably kept its employees out of jail in the early 70's.  Specifically, the Times frets that the US is out of step with Europe in having a much broader view of freedom of speech:

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed
a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business
executive who had called food stamps "basically a Puerto Rican
program." The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not
allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be
suppressed or punished just because they may increase "the general
level of prejudice."

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

"It
is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken," Jeremy Waldron, a
legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month,
"when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative
responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against
certain forms of vicious attack."

In the 1970's, members of my family worked in the oil industry, and we received numerous death threats of varying believability, and several of our friends received letter bombs or had family members kidnapped.  Many of these attacks and threats were directly traceable to certain media shows that featured editorial attacks on the oil industry.  So is the Times suggesting that the media should hold off on its criticism of the oil industry because this criticism created an atmosphere of hate in which these attacks were conducted?

No freaking way, because these calls to limit criticism and "hate speech" always have an ideological filter.  There is never a suggestion that the speech bans be even-handed.  Criticism of African Americans is outlawed, but exactly parallel language about white folks is A-OK.  Criticising Islam is out, but Christianity is a fine target.  Death threats against Haitian activists must be avoided at all costs, but death threats against corporate executives are no reflection on free speech or the media.  The article is quite explicit that by their definition, hate speech only applies to "minorities," which you can translate to mean "groups the political class has decided to protect."  You may be assured that members of the political class will find a way to get themselves included in this definition, so they can be free of criticism,

Kudos to Harvey Silvergate, who even makes the exact same point I have made about Hitler a number of times:

"Free speech matters because it works," Mr. Silverglate continued.
Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech
than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era.

"The world didn't suffer because too many people read "˜Mein Kampf,' " Mr. Silverglate said. "Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea."

I will add that I am also happy to be out of step with Europe in terms of any number of other policies, including American libel law, or laws that make it ever so much easier to start a business, and European tolerance for a cozy business-political elite that, whatever their party, focuses on keeping their elite wealthy and powerful.

After digging a First Amendment hole for itself in the Plame affair, the New York Times seems to still be hell-bent on narrowing the very First Amendment protections that probably kept its employees out of jail in the early 70's.  Specifically, the Times frets that the US is out of step with Europe in having a much broader view of freedom of speech:

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed
a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business
executive who had called food stamps "basically a Puerto Rican
program." The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not
allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be
suppressed or punished just because they may increase "the general
level of prejudice."

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

"It
is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken," Jeremy Waldron, a
legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month,
"when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative
responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against
certain forms of vicious attack."

In the 1970's, members of my family worked in the oil industry, and we received numerous death threats of varying believability, and several of our friends received letter bombs or had family members kidnapped.  Many of these attacks and threats were directly traceable to certain media shows that featured editorial attacks on the oil industry.  So is the Times suggesting that the media should hold off on its criticism of the oil industry because this criticism created an atmosphere of hate in which these attacks were conducted?

No freaking way, because these calls to limit criticism and "hate speech" always have an ideological filter.  There is never a suggestion that the speech bans be even-handed.  Criticism of African Americans is outlawed, but exactly parallel language about white folks is A-OK.  Criticising Islam is out, but Christianity is a fine target.  Death threats against Haitian activists must be avoided at all costs, but death threats against corporate executives are no reflection on free speech or the media.  The article is quite explicit that by their definition, hate speech only applies to "minorities," which you can translate to mean "groups the political class has decided to protect."  You may be assured that members of the political class will find a way to get themselves included in this definition, so they can be free of criticism,

Kudos to Harvey Silvergate, who even makes the exact same point I have made about Hitler a number of times:

"Free speech matters because it works," Mr. Silverglate continued.
Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech
than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era.

"The world didn't suffer because too many people read "˜Mein Kampf,' " Mr. Silverglate said. "Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea."

I will add that I am also happy to be out of step with Europe in terms of any number of other policies, including American libel law, or laws that make it ever so much easier to start a business, and European tolerance for a cozy business-political elite that, whatever their party, focuses on keeping their elite wealthy and powerful.

The Anti-planner observes:

Over the past 25 years, the population of the Pittsburgh urban area
has remained fixed at about 1.8 million people. Driving, however, has
increased by almost 50 percent.

During this period, Pittsburgh has spent hundreds of millions of
dollars upgrading light-rail lines, building exclusive busways, and "”
in the latest project "” building a $435 million transit tunnel under the Allegheny River. Despite (or because of) this investment, transit ridership has dropped by more than 25 percent.

Although the numbers vary slightly from place to place, Pittsburgh's
story is pretty typical of transit everywhere. Sure, some cities have
seen ridership gains, but subsidies to transit are huge and transit
does not make a notable (meaning 5 percent or more) contribution to
personal mobility in any urban area except New York (where it is 10
percent).

He has a good summary of what's wrong and what might work instead.  I appreciated this observation in particular:

Why do we put up with this? The answer, of course, is that transit is
pork. "For most transit agencies in the United States, if they were to
write a mission statement that is reflective of what they do, they
would indicate that they exist for the purpose of serving their
employees and vendors," not transit riders, notes Cox.

It is difficult to imagine that we would have the extensive, absurd subsidies of corn ethanol that we have today if it were not for the fact that Iowa is the first stop on the presidential campaign trail.  Every four years, here-to-fore fiscally sober and rational candidates stand up on Iowa TV and pledge to support ethanol subsidies.

But today it appears the primaries are finally over (it appears that Ms. Clinton will bow out tonight) and so attention now focuses on the general election.  And though I am not really an expert, I would presume the election will again turn on a few states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and, of course, Florida.

It appears that Florida Democrats have a plan to parlay their swing state status into pork, in the same way that Iowa has done for years.  The only difference is the issue is not ethanol, it's subsidizing beach-front homes:

As hurricane season begins, Democrats in Congress want to nationalize a
chunk of the insurance business that covers major storm-damage claims.

The proposal -- backed by giant insurers Allstate Corp. and State Farm
Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., as well as Florida lawmakers --
focuses on "reinsurance," the policies bought by insurers themselves to
protect against catastrophic losses. The proposal envisions a
taxpayer-financed reinsurance program covering all 50 states, which
would essentially backstop the giant insurers in case of disaster.

The program could save homeowners roughly $500 apiece in annual
premiums in Florida, according to an advocacy group backed by Allstate
and State Farm, the largest writers of property insurance in the U.S.

But environmentalists and other critics -- including the American
Insurance Association, a major trade group -- say lower premiums would
more likely spur irresponsible coastal development, already a big
factor in insurance costs. The program could also shift costs to
taxpayers in states with fewer natural-disaster risks....

The legislation passed the House with bipartisan support, 258-155, late
last year, despite a presidential veto threat. Although a Senate vote
is unlikely this year, proponents are trying to make it a litmus-test
issue in the presidential race. The two Democratic contenders, Sen.
Hillary Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, in their
recent visits to Florida -- a key swing state -- have both voiced
support for the plan.

Big winners would be coastal states, particularly Florida, where more
than half of the nation's hurricane risk is centered. Currently,
property-insurance rates in Florida are among the highest in the
nation. Florida also has a struggling state reinsurance fund that would
be helped by a federal program....

Florida's status as a presidential swing state has helped the plan win
support from Sens. Clinton and Obama. Sen, Clinton is one of the bill's
co-authors, along with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida.

Florida Democrats' effort to make a federal disaster fund a big issue
in this year's presidential race was one reason the state moved up its
primary election to January from March, defying party rules. (That move
is partly what's behind the current, heated battle between the
Democratic candidates over how to count Florida's delegates in the
nominating race.)

Andrew Coyne is live-blogging the Mark Steyn inquisition.  Check it out.

A few snippets:

10:16 AM
They're going to call, among others, Dr. Andrew Rippon,
professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Victoria, to show
that Steyn has misunderstood the relationship between the Koran and
Islamic society. Well, that's as may be. Would be a good subject for
debate. But why exactly does that require the state to adjudicate it?...

10:57 AM
Just coming back from a break. Lots of media interest, it seems: CBC, CTV (I'm told), the National Post, local media, and a guy from the New York Times,
who's doing a piece comparing how the two countries' legal systems deal
with speech cases. Needless to say, he can't believe what he's
witnessing"¦

11:04 AM
Under Section 7.1, he continues, innocent intent is not a defence, nor
is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith
or responsible journalism.

Or in other words, there is no defence.

Andrew Coyne is live-blogging the Mark Steyn inquisition.  Check it out.

A few snippets:

10:16 AM
They're going to call, among others, Dr. Andrew Rippon,
professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Victoria, to show
that Steyn has misunderstood the relationship between the Koran and
Islamic society. Well, that's as may be. Would be a good subject for
debate. But why exactly does that require the state to adjudicate it?...

10:57 AM
Just coming back from a break. Lots of media interest, it seems: CBC, CTV (I'm told), the National Post, local media, and a guy from the New York Times,
who's doing a piece comparing how the two countries' legal systems deal
with speech cases. Needless to say, he can't believe what he's
witnessing"¦

11:04 AM
Under Section 7.1, he continues, innocent intent is not a defence, nor
is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith
or responsible journalism.

Or in other words, there is no defence.

Most all local governments have extensive programs in place for government inspection of elevators because, you know, private businesses can't be trusted to operate safe equipment.  But it turns out the least safe elevators are operated by the government itself:

New York City Transit
has spent close to $1 billion to install more than 200 new elevators
and escalators in the subway system since the early 1990s, and it plans
to spend almost that much again for dozens more machines through the
end of the next decade. It is an investment of historic dimensions,
aimed at better serving millions of riders and opening more of the
subway to the disabled.

These are the results:

¶One of every six elevators and
escalators in the subway system was out of service for more than a
month last year, according to the transit agency's data.

¶The
169 escalators in the subway averaged 68 breakdowns or repair calls
each last year, with the worst machines logging more than double that
number. And some of the least reliable escalators in the system are
also some of the newest, accumulating thousands of hours out of service
for what officials described as a litany of mechanical flaws.

¶Two-thirds of the subway elevators "” many of which travel all of 15
feet "” had at least one breakdown last year in which passengers were
trapped inside.

The whole thing is pretty depressing.  But perhaps just as depressing is the fact that the NY Times, in a quite lengthy article, never once questions why the government is in the elevator maintenance business at all.  You see, the New York City Transit system hires all of its own maintenance people, presumably because, though the article never mentions it, the public employees union insists that these functions remain in house.  OK, here is a quiz:  How many private elevator owners in New York City have their own staff repair elevators?  My guess is the answer is close to zero.  Everyone uses third party elevator equipment repair companies or operate under long-term service contracts with the manufacturer.  Why?  Well, lets see what problems NY Transit faces:

"They don't have enough competent people with the proper training,"
said Michele O'Toole, the president of J. Martin Associates, which the
transit agency hired in 2006 to evaluate its elevator operations. "It
all reflects back to qualifications, training, capabilities."...

Elevators and escalators are spread out over a far-flung system,
requiring more mechanics and slowing responses to breakdowns. There has
been little standardization of parts, so mechanics must cope with a
bewildering hodgepodge of machinery. And the machines, which operate 24
hours a day, are subject to all sorts of abuse: Elevators become
makeshift bathrooms, and escalator steps are pounded by heavily loaded
hand trucks.

Guess what?  These are all classic reasons for outsourcing.  Manhattan elevator maintenance companies are set up to handle a far-flung elevator inventory, and can more efficiently stock parts, buy special equipment, and provide specialized training than can any individual operator.   Shared external capacity can also be sized and used much more efficiently to deal with random failures -- the more elevators in a region one maintains, the better staff can be utilized across a stochastic system.

But of course, the NY Times is never going to go against any public employee union, so it takes the line that this is a good governance issue, rather than a structural issue where an individual elevator owner is always going to be less efficient than outsourcing to a large regional third party company.  It compares NY Transit to other public transit agencies, but not to other private owners of elevators.  My guess is Donald Trump owns more elevators than NY Transit - how does he handle elevator maintenance?

By the way, the article says that there are 167 elevators and 169 escalators in the system.  They also say there are 200 full-time maintenance people.  So, on average, one person spends 60% of their year on a single elevator or escalator.  Think about the elevators and escalators you ride every day.  Can you imagine someone working on it for 1200 hours a year?

And what is this in the quotes above about slow responses to breakdowns in the far-flung empire?  With 200 people for 336 devices, they could practically assign an individual repair person to each one.   I can see him now, with his toolbox, sitting on a folding chair in the back of the elevator with a box of Krispy Kremes, waiting to spring into action at the moment of failure.

Apparently, the state of Arizona, fearing the coming old-folks demographic boom, is looking to create programs to keep older Americans working longer (and by extension off the government teat longer).

The thought of millions of boomers taking their early-retirement
benefits is causing concern about the stability of Social Security and
Medicare.

"We know not everybody is going to up and retire all at once," Starns
said, "and we will have younger workers coming in. But if you look at
all the demographics, there just won't be enough people to fill all the
jobs that could be vacant."

Add that possibility to existing shortages of workers in health-care
and other fields, she said, and "there could be some pretty significant
problems in society."

Arizona, which launched its Mature Workforce Initiative in 2005 to
avert such a crisis, was one of five states lauded last month for
efforts to engage people 50 and older in meaningful jobs and community
service.

The San Francisco-based Civic Ventures think tank also cited
California, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts, saying the five
states recognize older workers as "an experience dividend," rather than
a drain on resources.

Of course, since it is government, the state of Arizona is, with one hand, patting itself on the back for instituting vague and meaningless but well publicized programs nominally targeted at this issue, while with the other taking steps that have real and substantial effects in exactly the opposite direction.

First, Arizona has some of the toughest laws in the country to penalize businesses for hiring, even accidentally, young vigorous immigrants who don't have all their government licenses in order.   Young workers are pouring into this state every day, but Arizona is turning them away and locking them up. 

Second, Arizona has been legislating as fast as it can to make it nearly impossible to hire older workers.  I know, because the vast majority of my work force managing campgrounds is over 65.  These workers tend to work for a free camp site plus minimum wage.  They like the job despite the low pay because they get a place to park their RV and because the job is part time and very flexible in how they work (not to mention offers the opportunity to take whole chunks of the year off).  I like these workers because they are experienced and reliable and paying them minimum wage helps offset their slowing productivity and higher workers comp costs as they age. 

Here is the math:  Older workers might work 30-50% slower than a younger worker (I have workers right now in their nineties!)  They also have higher workers comp costs, maybe equating to as much as 10% of wages.  This means that an older worker at the old minimum wage of $5.15 an hour might be financially equivalent to a younger worker making $9.50 an hour, which is about what we might have to pay for such a worker. 

However, many states have implemented higher minimum wages with annual cost of living escalators.  States like Oregon and Washington now have minimum wages over $9.00.  At $9.00 an hour, an older worker is now financially equivalent to a younger worker making $16.50 an hour, well above what I can hire such a person for.  This means that as minimum wages rise, I have to consider substituting  younger workers for older but slower workers.

Last year, Arizona adopted just such a minimum wage system with annual escalators.  Though we have not reached the point yet, the state soon may make it impossible economically to hire older workers.  Already, we are looking at some automation projects to reduce headcount in certain places.  This is sad to me, but in a business where a 12% rise in wages wipes out my entire profit, I have to think about these steps.  I have to react to the fact that, no matter how many "policy advisers on aging" the state hires, in reality it is increasing the price to my company of older people's labor vis a vis younger workers.

I must say that I find this state Supreme Court decision from Washington State terrifying.  It is interesting that the State of Washington has exactly the same proprietary attitude over the garbage business as does the Mafia in New York:

In a decision released this morning, the Court stated that hauling
construction waste is not a private enterprise and "is in the realm
belonging to the State and delegated to local governments." The court
found specifically that the provision of waste hauling service is a
"government service" and constitutional protections do not apply to
government-provided services.

I don't know the Washington State constitution, so it may indeed mention "construction waste hauling" as an enumerated power of the government.  If it does not, and by "constitutional protections do not apply" they mean the US Constitution, then this is a stunning over-reading of said document.  Nowhere, in the US Constitution at least, is there a provision for the government providing services of any kind, much less construction waste hauling. 

The City of Phoenix is subsidizing a mall developer to the tune of $100 million dollars.  Why?

Desperate to keep another Nordstrom store out of Scottsdale, the City
of Phoenix put together a $100 million incentive deal to lure the
upscale retailer to the new CityNorth development.

That picture emerged in Maricopa County Superior Court arguments Monday over the constitutionality of the package.

That deal bought a parking deck -- at $30,000 per parking spot.

You see, the developer and its allies in city hall were afraid that Nordstrom's might instead locate their new store waaaaayyyyy over in Scottsdale, probably at the shopping development getting started ... about a mile away and all of one exit further down loop 101, as show below or here.

Here is the gist of it:

At issue in the lawsuit is an agreement between the developers
of CityNorth and the city of Phoenix that enables the developers,
Related Urban Development and the Thomas J. Klutznick Co., to retain
half of the project's sales taxes in exchange for free public parking
spaces in a parking garage. The agreement goes for 11 years or $97.4
million, whichever occurs first.

Now, those of you who are from New York or Boston may be saying -- Hmm, free public parking.  Thats a good deal.  Well, in Phoenix, its absurd.  All the mall parking is free.  All the mall parking garages are free.  Every mall around these two locations provide free parking and parking garages.  In fact, a mall developer would get run out of town on a rail in north Scottsdale or Phoenix for even uttering the words "paid parking."  People freak out around here if the valet parking is not free.  Further, the city is trying to somehow portray that the parking is a useful asset for the community at large.  Look at the Phoenix site above.  Do you see a lot of stuff in the surrounding acres that is demanding a lot of parking?

Effectively, this is all a smoke screen for the city giving a $100 million handout to developers to build something, ie free parking, they already had to build.  And the incremental sales revenue argument is absurd.  All the wealthy Scottsdale folks who want to shop at Nordstrom's are already doing so, or are shopping at nearby Desert Ridge.  Only the worst sort of analysis would show incremental sales from this location - all it will do is shift sales around a bit.

I am reminded of my previous post on the subsidization of business relocations as a prisoners dilemma problem.

John Scalzi has what looks to be good advice for writers.  Why?

Because it very often appears to me that regardless of how smart and
clever and interesting and fun my fellow writers are on every other
imaginable subject, when it comes to money "” and specifically their own money
"” writers have as much sense as chimps on crack. It's not just writers
"” all creative people seem to have the "incredibly stupid with money"
gene set for maximum expression "” but since most of creative
people I know are writers, they're the nexus of money stupidity I have
the most experience with. It makes me sad and also embarrasses the crap
out of me; people as smart as writers are ought to know better.

Beyond really liking Scalzi's work, he does an amazing amount of work promoting other writers.  Just skim his blog for the last several months.  A hell of a lot more of it is about promoting other authors than it is about promoting his own work.  Here is an example of his advice.

8. Unless you have a truly compelling reason to be there, get the hell out of New York/LA/San Francisco.

Because they're friggin' expensive, that's why. Let me explain: Just
for giggles, I went to Apartments.com and looked for apartments in
Manhattan that were renting for what I pay monthly on my mortgage for
my four bedroom, 2800 square foot house on a plot of land that is,
quite literally, the size of a New York City block ($1750, if you must
know, so I looked at the $1700 - $1800 range). I found two, and one was
a studio. From $0 to $1800, there are thirteen apartments available. On
the entire island of Manhattan. Where there are a million people. I love that, man.

It seems that one of those cycles the US always castigates itself about is a perception that the Europeans have a better rail system than we do and that we should somehow emulate their system.  Which is why we still have federal subsidies of a half-assed Amtrak system and high-speed rail proposals are circulated breathlessly from time to time. 

By the way, I have been a consultant to French railroad SNCF and I gaurantee we do not want to emulate the European rail system.  First and foremost, the railroads are huge employment boondoggles.  I remember that the SNCF when I was there had something like 100,000 freight cars but 125,000 freight car maintenance people.  I suggested the railroad could assign one individual full time to his own car and still lay off 20% of the work force. 

The main reason we don't have inter-city passenger rail is a simple one that anyone spending 5 minutes with the numbers can understand -- there are distance break points where air travel is more economic than rail, and most US inter-city transit falls into the larger distance ranges.

Anyway, the anti-planner shares a bit of information that is seldom mentioned in the rail discussion that makes the US rail system look a lot more desireable:

Europe has decided to run its rail system primarily for passengers,
while America's system is run mainly for freight. Europe's rail system
has about 6 percent of the passenger travel market, while autos have
about 78 percent. Meanwhile, 75 percent of European freight goes by
highway. Here in the U.S., highway's share of freight travel is only 29
percent, while the auto's share of passenger travel is about 82
percent. So trains get 4 percent of potential auto users in Europe out
of their cars, but leave almost three times as much freight on the
highway.

In fact, the freight rail system is so efficient that to some extent we've obviated the need for the Panama Canal.  Many Asian container ships bound for Europe actually make port in Seattle or Vancouver, offload their containers onto trains which shoot across the country to New York or another eastern port where they are reloaded on ships for the trip to Europe.

By the way, in the same article, don't miss the hilarious proposal in Minnesota to spend taxpayer money for a high speed rail line from the Twin Cities to ... Duluth.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  New York to Boston barely makes it financially, but St. Paul to Duluth is going to be a winner.

The New York Times editorial board had one of the most jaw-dropping pieces I have read in a long time.  In it, they are absolutely unapologetic in saying that they think the government can spend your money better than you can -- and the larger the government take, the happier we all will be.

The munificence of American corporate titans warms the heart, sort of.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that the top 50 donors gave $7.3
billion to charity last year "” about $150 million per head....

Yet we'd be so much happier about all the good things America's
moneyed elite pay for if the government made needed public investments.

The flip side of American private largess is the stinginess of
the public sector. Philanthropic contributions in the United States "”
about $300 billion in 2006 "” probably exceed those of any other
country. By contrast, America's tax take is nearly the lowest in the
industrial world.

Oh my God, does anyone actually believe that Congress does a better job spending your money than you do?  Apparently they do:

Critics of government spending argue that America's private sector does
a better job making socially necessary investments. But it doesn't.
Public spending is allocated democratically among competing demands.
Rich benefactors can spend on anything they want, and they tend to
spend on projects close to their hearts.

LOLOLOL.  Has anyone looked at the last highway bill?  How many tens of thousands of politically motivated earmarks were there?   

Philanthropic contributions are usually tax-free. They directly reduce
the government's ability to engage in public spending. Perhaps the
government should demand a role in charities' allocation of resources
in exchange for the tax deduction. Or maybe the deduction should go
altogether. Experts estimate that tax breaks motivate 25 percent to 30
percent of contributions.

At the end of the day, this is not about a better prioritization process for spending -- this is about the NY Times getting a bigger say for itself in said spending.  They know that Warren Buffet couldn't give a rat's behind what the NY Times thinks about how he spends his money, but Congressmen trying to get reelected do care.  The NY Times wields a lot of political, but little private, influence, so they want to see as much spending as possible shift to political hands where the Times wields clout.

Postscript: Boy, here is some quality journalism:

Federal, state and local tax collections amount to just more than 25.5
percent of the nation's economic output. The Finnish government
collects 48.8 percent. As a result, the United States spends less on
social programs than virtually every other rich industrial country,
according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Finnish government probably has money to build children's health
clinics.

"Probably has money?"  What does that mean?  Do they have government-funded children's health clinics or not?  The Times couldn't work up enough energy to fact-check that?  And by the way, who, other than the NY Times, declared that the best marginal use of additional public funds is for children's health clinics?

Postscript #2: Many of the very rich have been funding schools that are competitive with government-monopoly schools.  In this and many other cases, wealthy people fund programs that work better and cheaper than government alternatives.  I am sure that not only would the feds be happy to have this money to spend themselves (on some fat earmarks for key donors, most likely) but they would additionally be thrilled to get rid of the competition.

Update:  I must be going senile.  I missed the most obvious logical fallacy of all.  The NY Times says that our democratic government is the best possible mechanism for allocating funds.  But doesn't that also mean its the best possible mechanism for setting spending levels?  How can it complain that our democratic government is doing a bad job in setting total spending levels but does a great job in allocating that spending?

Via the New York Times:

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
responded Wednesday to growing public anxiety about inflation by
announcing that China would freeze energy prices in the near term, even
as international crude oil futures have continued to surge....

Last November, China raised gasoline and diesel prices by almost 10
percent, partly to appease officials at state-owned refineries.
Refiners had complained that price controls were forcing them to
swallow the difference between higher prices for crude oil on the world
market and regulated consumer prices at home for refined products. So
refineries cut back production of gasoline and particularly diesel,
causing long lines at fuel stations around the country.

More on past Chinese problems from gas price caps.  Here is a picture of one such past gas line in China. 

    I got my driver's license in 1978, just in time to spend the first few months of my driving life sitting in gas lines with the family car, a result of a series of market distorting actions by the US government.

Meanwhile, I presume the French and Germans will see no problem with this approach:

The Economist says,
of the state of economics education in France and Germany, "I
desperately hope it's not really this bad." Unfortunately, I think it's
really that bad. When the 35 hour work week was proposed, I was talking
to someone in the French consulate who did economics and trade. "Aren't
you worried that this will raise employer's costs and lead to business
failures or higher unemployment?" I asked.

"That's just Anglo-saxon economics" was his rather stunning reply.  Apparently, in France, demand curves do not slope downwards.

It is always amazing how big round numbers hold the media in thrall.  Last week we saw the inevitable spate of articles about oil crossing the $100 mark, if only for a few minutes of trading  (actually, the more interesting milestone was somewhere back in the low $90 range when we exceeded the highest past price for oil in inflation-adjusted dollars).

I don't get hugely worked up about gradual commodity price changes.  Oil price increases are signals, signaling marginal consumers to use less and suppliers with historically marginal sources and substitutes to consider their development.  Also, our economic dependence on oil per dollar of GDP has declined, meaning that $100 oil has less impact on the economy than, say, it would have 20 years ago:

I would certainly prefer lower oil prices, and my business suffers to some extent when gas prices rise, but it is not a disaster  (it is interesting that higher oil prices are considered bad in the media, while lower home prices are considered bad in the media).  I know from past experience in the oil patch that oil price bubbles are often followed by oil price drops.  The high oil prices of the seventies were followed by rock-bottom oil prices in the eighties, and subsequent recession in the oil patch (causing the housing bust I discussed here). 

Also, given how we got to these higher oil prices, I tend to take them as good news.  Oil prices are not rising due to some drop off in supply.  Instead, they are rising because of a strong global economy, in particular with millions of people entering the middle class in Asia.  This is GOOD news. 

I have written on peak oil a bunch, so I won't get into it again.  Oil production at worst is going to flatten out for a long time, meaning we will have a steady rise in oil prices over time as the economy grows.  If you want a third party evaluation of peak oil theory, go ask climate catastrophists who believe that CO2 production is an impending disaster for the economy.  These guys know that there are lots of unproduced hydrocarbons out there, and it terrifies them.   Al Gore and James Hansen were running around last week trying to close off Canadian tar sands from development.

Finally, after this series of random thoughts, one more interesting take on this via Megan McArdle:  $100 oil was a stunt

Some observers questioned the validity of the price mark when it
emerged that the peak was the result of a trader "“ one of the "locals"
who trade on their own money "“ buying from a colleague just 1,000
barrels of crude, the minimum allowed, industry insiders said. The deal
on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange was at a hefty premium
to prevailing prices.

Insiders named the trader as Richard Arens, who runs a brokerage
called ABS. He was not available for comment. Analysts said he may have
been testing the ceiling of the crude price, but the premium he paid
surprised the market.

Before the $100-a-barrel trade, oil prices on Globex were at $99.53
a barrel. Immediately after the trade, prices went down to about
$99.40, suggesting a trading loss of $600 for Mr Arens.

Stephen Schork, a former Nymex floor trader and editor of the
oil-market Schork Report, commented: "A local trader just spent about
$600 in a trading loss to buy the right to tell his grandchildren he
was the one who did it. Probably he is framing right now the print
reflecting the trade."

I really can't stand to be in New York City for very long.  The crowds, the hassles and the lines all conspire to drive me crazy.  Every second I feel like I am packed around by more people, and I find it horribly claustrophobic.

If your immediate reaction to this statement is to feel like I am attacking you or your lifestyle, you are wrong.  My purpose is not to say that those who love it here in NYC are making an incorrect choice, for they are not.  If they derive energy from the people and the density and all the amenities that density can justify, great.  It is in fact an interesting (and depressing) feature of modern discourse that my saying that I don't personally choose a certain lifestyle is found as threatening to people who do.  Why should it?  My only answer is that this zero-sum statist society of activists has created the expectation that the next step of anyone who expresses a negative preference for something will be to run to the government to get it banned.

The reason I bring my preference up at all is that the vast majority of city planners get a huge hard-on for New York.  Their goal is to turn the world into Manhattan.  They wish to maximize densities and minimize personal automobile use and, well, backyards.  In other words, a bunch of folks who have the ear of the government wish to use the coercive power of the government to turn the world into something I can't live in.  Again, I have no problem with New Yorkers having New York, but why does Scottsdale have to be New York too?

By the way, on a quasi-related topic, the Anti-Planner has an interesting observation:  Supposed gains in sustainability in high-density urban areas have more to do with making everyone poor than with the density  (emphasis added):

Many planning advocates take it for granted that sprawl and auto driving are inherently unsustainable. McShane shows
just how this attitude can go when he describes Halle Neustadt, which
some Swedish urban planners once described as "the most sustainable
city in the world."

McShane here refers to some field work
done by the Antiplanner. To make a long story short, what made Halle
Neustadt "sustainable" was poverty, and as soon its residents gained
some wealth, many of them moved out and most of the rest bought
automobiles, turning the cities many greenspaces into parking lots.

Owen then turns to climate change, which he describes as the last gasp
of smart growth. Smart growth, he notes, "has always been a policy in
search of a justification, a solution in search of a problem." Now, in
climate change, smart-growth advocates hope they have found such a
problem.

One difficulty, McShane notes, is that there is no guarantee that
smart growth is really more greenhouse-friendly than ordinary sprawl.
Depending on load factors, Diesel trains can emit more greenhouse gases
per passenger mile than autos, and concrete-and-steel high-rise condos
can emit more CO2 than wood homes.

McShane refers in particular to an Australian study
that found that "place doesn't matter," that is, low densities were not
particularly greenhouse unfriendly. Instead, income was much more
important, meaning that the high-rollers living in million-dollar
downtown condos were generating far more greenhouse gases than
moderate-income suburbanites.

Which implies that the "solution" to sustainability (whatever that is) and CO2 emissions is to promote poverty.  That may seem like a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration, but in fact the latest IPCC warning on climate relies heavily on the work of Nicholas Stern, who says the solution to global warming is to make western income levels look more like those in India (emphasis added):

Mr Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank, sends out a
very clear message: "We need to cut down the total amount of carbon
emissions by half by 2050." At current levels, the per capita global
emissions stand at 7 tonnes, or a total of 40-45 gigatonnes. At this
rate, global temperatures could rise by 2.5-3 degrees by then. But to
reduce the per capita emissions by half in 2050, most countries would
have to be carbon neutral. For instance, the US currently has, at 20-25
tonnes, per capita emissions levels that are three times the global
average.

The European Union's emission levels stand at 10-15
tonnes per capita. China is at about 3-4 tonnes per capita and India,
at 1 tonne per capita, is the only large-sized economy that is below
the desired carbon emission levels of 2050. "India should keep it that way and insist that the rich countries pay their share of the burden in reducing emissions," says Mr Stern.

Translation: India should stay poor and the West should become that way.

Today I was in Times Square and, unsurprisingly, was approached on the street by a young huckster attempting to get me to check out his establishment.  However, I was floored to see what was in the building.  In an attempt to meet a strong public need (the city of New York has been debating the lack of public restrooms for years to no effect) and to gain some marketing exposure, P&G has leased out storefront space in Times Square to open a Charmin-branded public restroom.  It is truly an odd experience, a cross between a bathroom and a Disney attraction.  There are games and entertainers and a gift shop, and, of course, twenty very nice private bathrooms that are cleaned by the staff after each use.  All my son and I could think to say when we were done was "We love America."

Here is more on the bathrooms and the promotion, open just for the holidays.

Someone has also posted a Youtube video of the entire experience:

Update:  After visiting again, I can't shake the parallel (despite the fact that these bathrooms are free) to the public restroom company in Snow Crash.  I know there are a lot of folks who rebel against the cyberpunk genre, and I have always been more of a space-opera traditionalist (Foundation, Mote in Gods Eye, Louis McMaster Bujold, Hyperion, etc.) but over time Snow Crash may well become my favorite Sci-fi book.

Awesome!  Via TJIC:

Ten minutes after finding out I passed the Bar, I changed my
long-running position on licensure, which it turns out is awesome. Not
only does it allow me to collect above market rents"“which lawyers need
because law school is so damned expensive"“but it also keeps those who
can't afford law school or Barbri from practicing law. This is good
because poor people make bad choices anyway, and I know that because
one week in college I ate Ramen noodles for a week, and that's the week
I decided to major in music. Also your average poor person, usually
cursed with some manner of hump or undeveloped siamese twin, will not
fit into a decent suit"¦

In sum, remember when choosing a lawyer that I was the first
one to finish the New York Bar exam, and though I probably didn't get
the highest score, I got the not-highest score the fastest. So if
you've got the choice between an attorney who will show up at 7 AM
sharp, with an obviously freshly dry-cleaned suit, and me, who will be
jogging fifteen minutes behind him while pulling on a shirt and
cleaning up some stubble with an electric razor, remember: the other
guy's smarter, of course, but I'm still competent. And a lot better
rested. Plus I'm not going to judge you for running that red light and
hitting that old lady"“that's what this case is about, right? Or was
that my other client?"“because chances are I nailed two or three myself
on the way over this morning.

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