Dispatches from District 48
Ties occur at the end of regulation in NBA basketball games way more frequently than one might expect from a normal distribution of scores. The distribution of point differential at the end of regulation looks really weird:
Why this is, and the role of strategy, is here (via the sports economist).
Throwing orange peels, coffee grounds and grease-stained pizza boxes in the trash will be against the law in San Francisco, and could even lead to a fine.
The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to approve Mayor Gavin Newsom's proposal for the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country. It's an aggressive push to cut greenhouse gas emissions and have the city sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.
"San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation," Newsom said, praising the board's vote on a plan that some residents had decried as heavy-handed and impractical. "We can build on our success."
The ordinance is expected to take effect this fall.
The legislation calls for every residence and business in the city to have three separate color-coded bins for waste: blue for recycling, green for compost and black for trash.
Failing to properly sort your refuse could result in a fine after several warnings, but Newsom and other officials say fines will only be levied in the most egregious cases.
I think if I lived there I would save some really rank crap buried in the back yard, maybe a few animal carcasses, to throw in the trash when the inspector came by to dumpster dive.
But the whole concept confuses me. There is this assumption that everything environmentalists always wanted us to do, like recycling, is automatically and without need for critical thought going to reduce CO2 emissions. But will it?
Doesn't composting increase greenhouse gas emissions vs. land filling? I have always wondered about this with Christmas tree recycling programs. If the program was really about reducing greenhouse gasses, why are we chipping the trees and spreading the chips around so they can decompose faster? Decomposition is basically just slow combustion, producing CO2 and some methane. Shouldn't we instead be shrink-wrapping the trees and burying them deep in the name of carbon sequestration?
By the way, advocates will say that recycling saves money. Well, it is not clear that it even saves the state any money but it certainly does not save you and I any. In fact, the only way people can even fool themselves into believing there is any economic benefit is to assume that the value of your and my time is $0. We are indentured servants, working for the state as trash sorters for no compensation.
Postscript: Assume there are 110 million households in the US, and each household has to spend 5 minutes a week sorting trash. And assume that the value of folk's time is $20 per hour (and I can guarantee you the marginal value of my free time is a LOT higher). This is $9.5 billion of stolen labor each year.
I am not at all a bankruptcy expert, but I have watched the Administration's efforts to evade bankruptcy law in favor of the UAW and at the expense of secured creditors with great interest.
I am wondering now whether something similar might be going on in the Phoenix Coyote's hockey team bankruptcy. The Coyotes are in bankruptcy, and the former owner (there is actually an interesting question as to whether he still is the owner) has solicited an offer of $212.5 million for the team from Jim Balsillie, contingent on Jim moving the team to Canada. This amount would pay off some but not all the creditors and would not leave the stadium authority whole on their lease (though I have limited sympathy there, as I begged and pleaded for our local governments not to subsidize hockey in Arizona).
Now, the league is demanding an extra $100+ million to be paid to the other team owners by Balsillie as a relocation fee for the team as an adjunct to the sale. There is some sense that this is a poison pill to kill the deal, because the league is mad that a) this sale is happening without its involvement and b) they sense the team has not done enough to keep the team in Arizona.
Nevertheless, if Balsillie were to agree to pay the extra $100 million, isn't this a total ripoff of creditors? In effect, he will be paying $312.5 for the team, but structuring the transaction so NHL team owners, rather than Coyote's creditors, get $100 million of the transaction. Am I missing something?
Disclosure: Jim Balsillie and I were section-mates at HBS.
Greg Mankiw writes about a Paul Krugman article on "the public option," a plan in Congress to provide a federal health insurance plan to compete with private plans and "keep them honest"**
It seems to me that [Krugman] leaves out the answer to the key question: Would the public plan have access to taxpayer funds unavailable to private plans?
If the answer is yes, then the public plan would not offer honest competition to private plans. The taxpayer subsidies would tilt the playing field in favor of the public plan. In this case, the whole idea of a public option seems to be a disingenuous route toward a single-payer system, which many on the left favor but recognize is a political nonstarter.If the answer is no, then the public plan would need to stand on its own financially and, in essence, would be a private nonprofit plan. But then what's the point? If advocates of a public plan want to start a nonprofit company offering health insurance on better terms than existing insurance companies, nothing is stopping them from doing so right now. There is free entry into the market for health insurance. If a public plan without taxpayer support would succeed, so would a nonprofit insurance company. The fundamental viability of the enterprise does not depend on whether the employees are called "nonprofit administrators" or "civil servants." (via Q&O)
But I think we already know the answer to this question. If Obama and the Democratic Congress is willing to pour a hundred billion dollars or more down the Chrysler and GM rat holes, they certainly are going to pony up far more to support a program so near and dear to their heart for so many years.
There is simply not some magic, easy to access pool of savings in health care available to government managers that will reduce costs 30% or pay for increases in benefits. If there were, Medicare should have already captured them.
** This is always hilarious to see, as if health insurers make some kind of inordinate profits. As shown before, the typical after-tax profit at health care companies and insurers is something like 3-4% of revenues.
We own about 100 trucks as part of the business, many of them Chevy's. We are going out right now to replace several, and I just can't bring myself to do business with Government Motors. So its Ford trucks for now.
I am totally pissed off at the Glad Corporation this evening. For over a year, I have been advocating the Amazon Kindle book reader (I now have a Kindle 2) in part because it actually is superior to regular books for reading in the bath tub. Just zip the Kindle into a clear Ziploc bag, and it is waterproof and quite easy to read. And it is easy to turn the pages, unlike trying to put a regular book in a bag.
That is, until today. For some reason, I misplaced my usual Ziploc bag. So I ran to the kitchen for a replacement, and found to my horror the new bag design is no longer clear. There is some kind of pattern in the plastic that is still sort of transparent but is far less satisfactory for book reading. I wonder if anyone is selling black market old-Ziploc bags on eBay?
The never-ending need of American corporations to tinker with designs usually helps make for a better world, but it has a dark side too. First the Edsel, and now less-than-transparent Ziplocs.
Postscript: We also used to use Ziplocs for cheap underwater photography. It actually works OK, if you pull the bag tight across the lens.
Update #1: The freezer bags are thicker -- I am hoping that they are still clear. I will run to the store tomorrow to buy a box and let you know.
Bill Whittle makes a great point in this video which is at the heart of the problems with this administration: While Obama and his young policy wonks may be smarter (or at least think they are smarter) than other folks individually, they cannot possibly be smarter than the sum of 300 million well educated, realtively affluent Americans making decisions for themselves. Every technocrat founders on these rocks, when they substitute their decision as command and control planners for individual decision making (example). Everyone talks about a revival of interest in Ayn Rand, and that is great, but it is Hayek who has never been more relevent.
More on the failures of technocrats here.
Kevin Drum, echoing Paul Krugman, looks at rising interest rates on Treasuries and decides that there is nothing to see here, move along. You will all be relieved to know that these rising interest rates have nothing to do with a couple of trillion dollars in new government borrowing, and the effect that this borrowing (and wild money printing) might have on
Boy, do I feel better.
PS - And remember, if interest rates do start exceeding historical norms, Krugman will discover that it is Bush's fault.
I was listening to NPR in a cab a week ago Sunday and heard an interview with Michael Moore on the [then] impending bankruptcy of GM. It is perfectly logical to interview Moore on such a topic, as he has been a long-time critic of GM's management, and I was curious to see what he would say.
In the interview, Moore was asked why GM failed. I wish I had a transcript to ge the exact words, but in effect he said that 1) GM failed because it did not pay its workers enough and 2) GM failed because the US has not promoted enough mass transit.
Huh? This is certainly a unique perspective, that GM with some of the highest manufacturing labor costs in the world, failed because its labor costs were not high enough. His "logic" seems to have been that by not paying its workers enough, GM caused real middle class income to stagnate for decades which therefore reduced demand for its cars. And don't even get me started on the proposition that GM was worse off because the government did not subsidize competitive transit modes enough. I guess it does not really surprise me that Moore, who wants the US medical care system to emulate Cuba, would be so illogical. But how does a seasoned journalist just let this stuff pass in an interview? Incredible.
Virginia Postrel has what seems to be a perfectly reasonable suggestion:
Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.
This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent of its spending thinks it's making a case for making the rest of the health care system more like Medicare.
Of course, I think both Obama and Congress know that either 1) such savings are impossible and/or 2) such savings would require steps painful enough to have millions of users squealing.
The Anti-Planner, in a long post dissecting a speech by Ray LaHood, brings some good facts to the table about the lack of success of efforts in cities to get people out of cars. Of particular interest is Portland, which is often held up by transit and in particular light rail supporters as the be-all-end-all city on the hill example of transit and growth planning. OK, let's use it as an example:
The 2007 American Community Survey found that, since the 2000 census, the number of Portland-area residents who say they usually bicycle to work grew from about 6,800 to 15,900. But the number who say they take transit to work declined from 58,600 to 57,900. The number who go to work by car (not counting taxis) grew from 664,300 to 730,500. This means that Portland roads have about 60,000 more cars during rush hour, but the region has put most of its transportation dollars into light rail and streetcars that carry no more people.
A lot of blame for this can go to the city's focus on light rail, whose enormous costs have cannibalized bus service and thus reduced total transit service. In particular, those who support transit as a god-send for the working poor should note that this substitution of large, inexpensive bus networks for more yuppie-friendly trains on narrow routes shifts transit away from the poor to white collar users.
...coerciveness is a fundamental part of the livability campaign, as shown by Portland, Oregon, whose official objective (see table 1.2) is to allow rush-hour traffic to grow to near-gridlock levels ("level of service F") on many major freeways and arterials. Besides diverting federal highway money into light rail instead of things that will actually relieve congestion, much of the money that Portland does spend on roads goes into "traffic calming," a euphemism for "congestion building" which consists of putting barriers in roads, speed humps, narrowing streets, and turning auto lanes into exclusive bike lanes.
Beyond the moral and constitutional question of whether government should have the right to intrude into people's lives is the more practical question of whether the benefits of such intrusions justify their costs. In the case of Portland, the costs include a nearly twelve-fold increase in the costs of congestion between 1982 and 2005, the more than $2 billion spent on light rail, and nearly $2 billion spent on subsidies to transit-oriented developments. Meanwhile, the benefits include a lot of New York Times articles making Portlanders feeling smug about themselves, but not much else except for the lucky (or politically connected) few getting the subsidies.
Because in a public company, I might have to, out of fiduciary responsibility, accede to this:
China plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain Web sites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the Internet.
Running a private company, I can tell them to take a hike. As I did last week, when I was offered a large piece of new business but refused it because it required that I drug test all my employees.
Via Maggies Farm, Dr. Melissa Clouthier:
y biggest concern with Government Run health care is that the government will run it and run you. That is, your life will be controlled from cradle to grave. You will eat a certain way"¦or else. You will do certain things"¦or else. And the government will have every motivation to force you down a path.
Ultimately, this is a civil liberties issue. Some people say that not having health care for all is shameful in such a wealthy country. Shameful is the notion of a bureaucrat deciding whether you live or die based on the metrics of a chart. That's shameful. And that would be our future. It is a future I don't want to see.
Just look at the big government, totalitarian groups that are for this mess. It should give you an idea of what you'd have to look forward to in the future.
Yep. It is still amazing to me that the National Organization for Women, who have built 80% of their history on "Keep the government out of my body" is a huge supporter of national health care.
TJIC described the problem well:
The art of socializing everything under the sun, in four steps:
- For no reason at all, have the taxpayers deal with situation X.
- Declare that people who create situation X are imposing a negative externality on others.
- Tax and spend even more on cleaning up mess X, and make it illegal to create situation X, or put high taxes on X.
- Create winners and losers. Winners (those collecting tax dollars to clean up mess X) donate to politicians to keep the gravy flowing. Losers (those paying taxes and getting penalized) donate to politicians to lighten the yoke.
One example of application of this approach:
Old school:
- Some people overeat and get fat. Some of these people have heart attacks. No problem.
New school:
- Decide that taxpayers will pay for socialized health care.
- Declare that people who overeat are enemies of the state.
- Tax affordable, healthy-in-moderation food that does not appeal to NPR listeners.
- Collect the campaign donations.
The whole point of a pollution control regime driven by a carbon tax or cap-and-trade is to acknowledge that 300 million people making trade-off and investment decisions can do a better job reducing pollution than 300 people in Washington commanding solutions. Give individuals an emissions cap (or raise the price of emissions) and people will make their own decisions how best to handle the response. One household in Arizona might put in solar, while the Seattle household would see solar as a waste and might get the same reductions via conservation.
So why does the current cap-and-trade bill have so much command and control embedded in it?
In fact, the bill also contains regulations on everything from light bulb standards to the specs on hot tubs, and it will reshape America's economy in dozens of ways that many don't realize.
Here is just one: The bill would give the federal government power over local building codes. It requires that by 2012 codes must require that new buildings be 30 percent more efficient than they would have been under current regulations. By 2016, that figure rises to 50 percent, with increases scheduled for years after that. With those targets in mind, the bill expects organizations that develop model codes for states and localities to fill in the details, creating a national code. If they don't, the bill commands the Energy Department to draft a national code itself.
States, meanwhile, would have to adopt the national code or one that achieves the same efficiency targets. Those that refuse will see their codes overwritten automatically, and they will be docked federal funds and carbon "allowances" -- valuable securities created elsewhere in the bill that give the holder the right to pollute and can be sold. The Energy Department also could enforce its code itself. Among other things, the policy would demonstrate the new leverage of allocation of allowances as a sort of carbon currency -- leverage this bill would be giving to Congress to direct state behavior.
The reason, of course, is that Congress may nominally support cap-and-trade (mainly because it is hip and trendy, not because they really understand it) but they most certainly do not buy into the philosophy behind it -- that millions of individuals can make better decisions collectively than a few planners in Washington. Because Congress most certainly thinks they are smarter than everyone else and can make better decisions.
Of course, this is absurd. Has anyone tested these mandates above and seen if they are a less costly way to reduce emissions than other steps? Of course not, just as they did not for the new CAFE standards. In fact, I can prove it -- Do making massive investments in insulation and air conditioning efficiency make any sense in San Diego? Of course not -- in that mild climate, these are near useless investments. Does making me buy a more fuel efficient car to drive my 1.5 mile commute make sense? Of course not. But this is exactly what is happening, because Congress can only regulate to the mean, and the result is that in many cases its commands make no sense. Which is exactly why cap-and-trade was invented, ironically.
It took decades and, at times, antagonistic battles, but Harvard's gay community says it has finally cemented its academic legitimacy at the nation's oldest university. College officials will announce today that they will establish an endowed chair in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies, in what is believed to be the first professorship of its kind in the country.
Can the adults among us agree that a degree in LGBT studies has about zero economic value? Even a history degree has more economic value, as history studies tend to still be accompanied by some academic rigor. But the pathetic scholarship standards and non-existant statistical rigor with which most social sciences, and various [fill in the blank with oppressed group] studies departments in particular, are taught make the economic value of such a degree at best zero and at worst a negative.
I have no problem with anyone studying whatever they wish using their own resources. This is one place I diverge with Ayn Rand -- she might say that pursuing non-productive activity is inherently immoral. I would say that pursuing your own goals, whatever they be and however valuable or valueless they might be to others, is just fine as long as you don't demand that everyone else to support you.
The problem is that a degree at Harvard probably requires a $200,000 investment to complete. Given that, beyond a few career spots in academia, a LGBT studies degree is unlikely to ever recover enough (versus having no degree) to pay for such an investment, problems are inevitable. Either someone (read: taxpayers) will likely foot the bill, or else some student is going to find herself with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt and no realistic way to pay it back.
In fact, this latter situation is a common leitmotif of recent media stories, the college grad unable to handle his or her shocking debt load. Somehow, stories all seem to blame the capitalist system as a failure point. Michelle Obama, who similarly pursued [historically oppressed group] studies at Princeton, has expressed just this point of view.
Despite their Ivy League pedigrees and good salaries, Michelle Obama often says the fact that she and her husband are out of debt is due to sheer luck, because they could not have predicted that his two books would become bestsellers. "It was like, 'Let's put all our money on red!' " she told a crowd at Ohio State University on Friday. "It wasn't a financial plan! We were lucky! And it shouldn't have been based on luck, because we worked hard."
Is this problem really so hard to diagnose, or have we gotten so politically correct we cannot state a fact out loud that everyone understands -- that is, some degrees have more economic power than others. LGBT studies degrees likely have very little economic utility. So it is fine to pursue such a degree, but don't be surprised when you are not offered a six-figure income at graduation, and don't come to me expecting that I pay for your choice.
It strikes me GM has at least four problems that led to its bankruptcy:
It is astoundingly hard to see how federal government ownership of GM will fix any of these. The Obama intervention in the bankruptcy has been one long giveaway to the UAW, and it is already clear that any radical or painful restructuring steps will be muddled in the political process. What we really needed were innovative radicals swooping in a picking up assets in bankruptcy, to be run in totally new ways. What we get instead are 31-year-old grad students with no experience in automobiles or any other business enterprise calling the shots:
It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.
But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry."¦
But now, according to those who joined him in the middle of his crash course about the automakers' downward spiral, he has emerged as one of the most influential voices in what may become President Obama's biggest experiment yet in federal economic intervention.
While far more prominent members of the administration are making the big decisions about Detroit, it is Mr. Deese who is often narrowing their options.
I can say this will end poorly with some confidence, as I too at 31 found myself to be a smart but inexperienced guy advising Fortune 50 CEOs for McKinsey & Co. I am embarrassed to this day at the solutions we used to push that blinded us with their elegance but turned out to make no sense in the real world.
The Obama administration reminds me of nothing so much as a grad school policy seminar suddenly finding itself running a government. All that naive technocratic hubris we once kept safely bottled away in Cambridge and New Haven has been released to wreck havok on the real world.
For more, read my previous work on why GM should fail, and try to see if anything proposed to day gets at the issues discussed. At the end of the day, what those in the Obama Administration and their many supporters fail to understand is the very basic concept of how wealth and value get created, and how this relates to the deployment of assets. I won't go into depth on this topic today, but suffice it to say that pumping a trillion dollars or so of government borrowing into the least well-managed institutions in the country is not a recipe for growth.
Update: George Will has more.
But one reason Amtrak runs on red ink is that legislators treat it as their toy train set, preventing it from cutting egregiously unprofitable routes. Will Congress passively accept auto plant-closing decisions? Rattner says that Washington's demure vow is: "No plant decisions, no dealer decisions, no color-of-the-car decisions." He is one-third right. Last week, under the headline "Senators Blast Automakers Over Dealer Closings," The Post reported, "Because the federal government is slated to own most of General Motors and 8 percent of Chrysler, some of the senators said they have a responsibility, as major shareholders do, to review company decisions."
With the help of the California legislature, we can make it three out of three, as California is mulling legislation to ban certain car colors to stop global warming (lol).
Update #2: More on the Chrysler shotgun wedding with Fiat.
A portion of my novel BMOC was satire of oddball lawsuits. In that book, for example, I had a woman suing Disney because she found that the characters at Disney World were people in costumes rather than the actual animated characters she had expected. I thought that was enough beyond reason and reality to constitute satire, but I guess I was wrong:
On May 21, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who said she had purchased "Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries" because she believed "crunchberries" were real fruit. The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said "berries" were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.
When private companies in financial distress pay out employee bonuses that were contractually obligated: bad. When governments in financial distress pay out employee bonuses that are entirely discretionary: A-OK.
Amid the downturn in the economy, the city of Phoenix handed out more than $300,000 in cash bonuses, a CBS 5 News investigation found.
The bonuses, which ranged from $500 to $6,000 for a grand total of $354,800, were paid in October, according to public records...
Nevertheless, records show former Parks and Recreation Director Sara Hensley received a $3,500 cash award; the same month, she resigned to take a similar job in Texas.
Library Director Tony Garvey received a $4,000 cash award. Shortly after, libraries were forced to shorten hours and cut positions.
We just finished up 4-1/2 days in Washington, DC, and I wanted to share some thoughts of various attractions. Unlike with Disney World, I am not a Washington expert, so others are welcome to comment with their thoughts.
Hotels: Right now, hotels are offering screaming deals. I have become a Hotwire aficionado, in large part because I discovered this site which helps one break the secrecy at Hotwire and figure out in advance, with a fair bit of certainty, exactly what hotel for which one is signing up. As a result, I got a $165 rate at the Willard, right next to the White House, which was less than my sister paid for a Residence Inn out at Dupont Circle. And unlike many hotels who sometimes put Hotwire customers in the worst rooms, we got a huge room, really a suite. And there is no better location for being a tourist in Washington than the Willard.
Restaurants: We had really bad luck with restaurants for dinner. There are plenty of chains for predictable meals, but we tried several local favorites and were disappointed each time, even after checking them out at TripAdvisor (another favorite site of mine). I don't know if this was bad luck or a statement on Washington dining. We did have a good meal in Georgetown, where there are lots of choices. It looked like there were some nice places with cafe-style outdoor dining on Wisconsin Ave near the center of Georgetown, but I can't remember any of their names. We had ice cream in Georgetown at Thomas Sweets, a family favorite we knew because it is an institution at Princeton.
Lunches, on the other hand, were a pleasant surprise. Both the National Gallery and the Natural History Museum had very nice cafes with lots of dining choices, good salad bars, etc. We liked these better than the all-McDonald's fair at the Air and Space Museum.
Never, ever eat breakfast in a fancy hotel, unless you are very wealthy. We tried the outdoor cafe one day at the Willard and ended up with the classic 5-star 4 croissant $100 breakfast. We quickly found a bakery a block away by the Filene's Basement that was just fine for breakfast.
Transport: At the Willard, we were walking distance from nearly everything we wanted. The Washington subway system is very good and cheap, and we used it several times (after all, my tax money pays for it so I might as well). Cabs seem cheap but beware -- they add $1.50 for each extra person beyond one and some amount for each bag in the trunk. We took the cab to National Airport when we got pinched for time (the subway goes right there) and found that we had an $11 charge before the wheels even started to roll. Fortunately, National was so close the final bill was less than $25. Cabs are therefore better for long trips than short ones.
Memorials: We walked around the Washington monument but did not go up (we were way too late in the day to get tickets). For various reasons related to the elevation and the buildings on the mall, the area at the base of the monument is windy as heck, even if the rest of DC is calm, so it is a nice place to relax with a good view on a hot day. The Lincoln Memorial is far better seen at night than during the day. The memorial is powerful, but the view from it at night is awesome.
The Vietnam War Memorial is simply awesome. I have never yet found a war memorial that is more moving. Unlike many memorials, it is truly dedicated to the individuals who fought and died. In contrast, the WWII memorial is, to my mind, a complete loss as a memorial. While dramatic architecturally and in a great location, it produces zero emotion. It has monuments to states and places, not people.
Air and Space Museum: Always a winner. I have never met a person who didn't enjoy it. But expect crowds to be high -- this is by far the most popular spot on the mall. The IMAX shows get most of the attention but I found the planetarium shows to actually be more interesting (though visually less stunning).
National Gallery: I struggle with large art galleries. My favorites are places like the Frick in New York, which are easily digestible. I floundered in the Louvre -- there is just too much. I found the National Gallery to be a nice size -- large enough to have some great pieces, but small enough that one can get through several different eras in a single visit. My wife likes the French impressionists, while I like the earlier Dutch, and there was good stuff for both of us to see. I thought the modern art collection in the annex was pretty mediocre. There is a fabulous huge Calder in the atrium, however, that is worth a quick peak inside.
Natural History Museum: This one is tough. Either you have to see it for 5 minutes or 5 hours. One can jam through and see the Hope diamond and the squid and a few other attractions, or one can really take time to learn from the exhibits, in which case one needs to be prepared to stay quite a while. To the latter goal, I prefer the new reorganization of the Natural History museum in New York -- I think it is more logical and really helps one understand the evolution and relationship of species better.
Museum of American History: This museum has changed several times, looking to find its niche. I think it used to be more of a technology museum. I actually loved the old museum, full of old steam engines and machinery, but I think my kids liked the new version better, which is aimed more at being a history museum (there is still a technology portion, with some good machinery, cars, and trains, but it is smaller). The military history section is good, and fills a niche that really hasn't existed before in this country, though it falls far short of, say, the Imperial War Museum in London. My wife always likes to check out the first lady gowns.
International Spy Museum: I was kind of skeptical of this, thinking it might be like a Madame Tussuad's or some-such. But this museum was fabulous. It had great exhibits, and was very well organized. Had the single best combination of any museum we went to of cool exhibits combined with teaching. The kids loved it too, as there were some good kids activities and lots of interactive things. In addition to the museum, we also did an interactive experience with a group of 12 folks for about an hour. This was a simulated spy mission, complete with eavesdropping, breaking in and searching an office, interrogation, etc. Maybe a bit campy for adults, it is very well done and the kids loved it. Like Disney but much more interactive. Note that both the museum and the experience require advanced reservations.
White House: Probably my biggest disappointment of the week. Note that currently, the only way you can get a tour is through your Congressman -- you have to contact his or her office and get them to schedule you a time, and you have to submit some personal information in advance for security checks. Having gone through this, I thought we might actually get, you know, a tour. But instead all we got was the right to join an endless, really slow-moving line that allowed us to see about three rooms with no tour guide or interpretation. Kids like being able to say they had been there, but that was about the only value.
Capitol: One can sign up for a public tour, in which case you will, from my observation, stand in some huge lines. If you want to bypass this, and you are talking to your Congressperson already for the White House tour, see if you can get a staff-led private tour. One of John Shadegg's aids showed about eight of us through the capital and into the House gallery. She did a very good job (thanks Congressman Shadegg!) and we skipped most of the lines. By the way, I did indeed see our new billion dollar visitor center. It was enormously disappointing. The public spaces were huge, but mostly filled with queues (apparently most of the space was appropriated by Congress for their own use as offices and meeting rooms). We saw a film in a nice theater, but the propaganda meter was turned up pretty high (They kept calling the capitol the "temple of liberty." Really? Someone must have forgotten to tell Congress).
Archives: You gotta go see the big documents. The Bill of Rights, a copy of Magna Carta, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence are all there (though the Declaration has really faded). If we have a "temple of liberty" in Washington, this is more rightly it. Or maybe it is more rightly called the reliquary of liberty. There can be a line, but this changes a lot through the day. If it looks like a long wait, come back in a few hours and the line may be gone. Also, they have opened up new galleries that are usually totally uncrowded with a lot of other cool documents. I could have spent all day here but my family dragged me out.
Botanical Gardens: The surprise of the trip. We tripped over this place by accident, as it seems to have few visitors. I never even knew it existed, which is odd as it is cleverly hidden right on the mall next to the capitol. The big glass conservatory has 8 or 9 zones with different plants from desert to tropical. This is an outstanding place to decompress, and surprisingly my kids even liked it. If you go, don't forget to go up the stairs to the catwalk in the jungle canopy, which includes a pretty unique view of the capitol building.
Places we missed but wanted to go: Jefferson Memorial, Hershorn Gallery, Corcoran Gallery, Air and Space Museum Annex (near Dulles).
Many people seem to like the FBI tour, but I just couldn't stand the thought.
One of the things I had never noticed before was just how prevalent George Washington's image is around the capital. The city is named after him, there are statues of him all over the place, the capital and the White House are full of paintings of him, and of course there's that big phallic symbol out on the mall. I found it a bit off-putting, something I would expect more of Napoleon or a Roman Emperor than a US President. The oddest site of all was the mural on the dome of the capital, which actually shows the deification of George Washington, a leitmotif taken from Roman emperors and tyrants like Julius Caesar, who were often deified by Senate proclamation after their deaths.
Which brings me to our current president. The cult of personality around Obama as seen in the Washington area is just startling, and horribly troubling for those concerned about the power of the state and individual liberty. Pictures of him and his family are seemingly on every wall, with whole souvenir shops dedicated to everything Obama. Searching for some kind of analog, I actually found two:
My Princeton roommates and I back in college and at reunions last week.
In the reunion photo, I am the guy in the orange and black on the left. Libertarian readers might also recognize Brink Lindsey of Cato third from the left. Each 25th reunion class gets their own blazer of unique design to cherish forever. I thought ours was pretty good.
I am on vacation with my family. We went to my 25th reunion at Princeton last week, and are now spending some tourist time in Washington DC. Be back soon.
Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the "public use language." Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion"“one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.
I have written about Didden in Forbes. The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined. Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he owned in a redevelopment district in Port Chester over which the town of Port Chester had given Greg Wasser control. Wasser told Didden that he would approve the project only if Didden paid him $800,000 or gave him a partnership interest. The "or else" was that the land would be promptly condemned by the village, and Wasser would put up a pharmacy himself. Just that came to pass. But the Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: "We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation."
Maybe I am missing something, but American business should shudder in its boots if Judge Sotomayor takes this attitude to the Supreme Court.
I covered the Didden case back in 2006, where I called it "the worst government abuse I have seen lately," an abuse that has since been Okay-ed by Sotomayor.
Update: I guess given his actions in Chrysler, Obama was happy to nominate a Supreme Court justice who gives a legal pass to outright blackmail.
