(Click to display a larger version of the photo.)

On July 4, 1941–five months before Pearl Harbor–a long poem titled Listen to the People, written by Stephen Vincent Benet, was presented on nationwide radio. The full text was also printed in Life magazine. Here’s the whole thing. I posted an excerpt of this poem at Chicago Boyz in 2006…in the comments, Steve Barton points to a podcast of a 1943 performance of this work.

A lifetime ago, I took a couple of courses in American Civ from William Goetzman; Amazon nudged that memory by noting his Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism had come out. Although not getting much read lately, I ordered it. Yesterday, A&L linked to a discussion in The Chronicle of Higher Education (which supports A&L). Carlin Romano’s “Obama, Philosopher in Chief” uses Goetzmann as foil.

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Okay, this is driving me nuts.

A joint venture between Russia’s Gazpom and Nigeria’s NNPC resulted in a company named “Nigaz.” [h/t Instapundit] They got into this trouble due to the Russian style of making acronyms using the  syllables of words instead of the first letter. This style was very popular in socialist movements prior to WWII, which is were we got Nazi, Gestopo and Checka. This style remain popular in formally communist countries and in Asia whose ideographic languages do not lend themselves to initialisms e.g. the Pokemon children’s game comes from the romanized Japanese POket MONster. 

This style of acronym has a specific name but I can’t remember it and I find it in any online or offline reference. This will bug me  all day!

If you know the word I’m am looking for pitch in and save my sanity!

[Update: Wikipedia suggest either a "portmanteau word"  or "syllabic abbreviation" but I can't shake the feeling that their is a specific word with latin or greek roots. *Sigh*]

At various times I have written about the “science” of project management, which claims vast increases in productivity and its new roots (mainly from the 1950’s) but in fact compares unfavorably against many historical projects, such as this post on a railway built in Skagway, Alaska in a rapid fashion in a brutal climate over 100 years ago. This isn’t to say that project management isn’t important, or that it shouldn’t be viewed as a critical skill set, but just to say that a proper historical perspective shows that project management has been around forever in various guises, even without mumbo-jumbo technical jargon created expressly for the field.

A recent article, with published photo, in the “PM Network“, showed the extreme limits of someone swallowing the methodology hook, line and sinker. I kept the caption with the photo but here is the text:

Companies want specific industry or technical experience rather than project management experience, which surprises me.

Let’s think about this astonishing statement, for a minute. When a company is hiring a candidate for projects, and they have multiple candidates to choose from (which is pretty much the norm with today’s economy), why WOULDN’T they look for someone from their industry (say, energy), with a specific technical capability (perhaps engineering), along with project management experience.
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I am going to be early for once and wish a happy July 4 to all of you guys on that side of the Pond. I know things seem tough at the moment but I, for one, have great faith in America and in the Anglosphere in general. Even those unpleasant manipulations by the EU and President Sarkozy will not defeat the latter and, as for the former, you have had bad times before. So, have a good time and on with the motley.

But beyond humor that misses, with some audiences or with all, what characterizes snark? Two things, I think. One is that it is an appeal to emotion - it is a statement with a particular affect, and the affect is an appeal to an attitude in which both writer and reader participate, but they participate in an exclusionary way. This is what makes it a branch of irony. Instead of arguing to everyone on the basis of shared reason so that, at least in principle, everyone could be included in the shared sentiment, snark depends upon exclusion. It is a refusal to offer a public argument, with the possibility of reasoned inclusion, and instead depends upon prior shared views that merely exclude because snark does not make an attempt to persuade. It is ‘affectively exclusionary’ in the language of moral psychology.
 
[...]
 
Two, because snark depends upon a prior shared commitment, it is a form of question-begging argument. Not precisely a form of argument, because it is about affect, not reason. So, more precisely, snark is the affective cognate of a question-begging argument, in which the sentiment of the conclusion assumes the sentiment of the premise. It assumes that one already shares the attitudes necessary to … share the attitudes.

-Kenneth Anderson

(Studio version, official video.)

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A week ago today, the House of Representatives passed the very long and complex Waxman-Markey energy bill. This bill included 300 pages of amendments which were added by the Democratic leadership at 3:00 AM Friday morning. It is impossible that any of those voting on the bill could have read and understood this complete bill as amended. (Many of the amendments were apparently of the “subparagraph (c) of paragraph XXII is amended to replace AAAA by BBBB” type, which require careful and undisturbed thought to comprehend.)

This bill, should it become law, will have enormous impact on the lives of all Americans and on future generations. There was no particular reason why it had to be voted on last Friday, except possibly for Nancy Pelosi’s vacation plans. It says much about the character of the majority of members of this House that they passed it without reading and understanding it.

What would we think of a financial manager/advisor who invested all of a family’s money into a particular investment without doing serious due diligence–who, for example, put all the money into purchasing a fast-food franchise without bothering to read either the prospectus or the franchise agreement? How about “violation of fiduciary responsibility?” What this House has done is similar in principle, though obviously much further-reaching in its implications.

Dear liberal and “progressive” friends: When you talk about drastically expanding the role of government in American society, remember that “government” is not some abstract and benign entity. Are you really comfortable having every detail of your life planned for you by people who take their responsibilities with as little seriousness as that demonstrated by the House last week?

If government by the people is “democracy,” and government by an elite is “aristocracy”…I wonder what the proper Greek would be for “government by clowns”?

I usually carry my camera as I pass around Chicago on foot and try to capture anything that seems different or odd. Since my photos are famously low quality I try to make up for it with a high quantity.

In the upper left - this is a photo of a house in a VERY expensive part of River North, an old brownstone. But looking in the window I see… one of those “skull” vodka bottles - It is called “Crystal Head Vodka” and the link, strangely enough, comes to a sales pitch by Dan Akroyd.

In the upper right, a photo of Coyote Ugly, in River North, now defunct. Their web site mentions that many of their bars closed across the USA, but they still seem to be around in others. Strangely enough, someone walked up to me on the street and asked if I knew where Coyote Ugly was, and I did, and I also told him it was closed and directed him and his buddy to Hooters nearby. Very odd that I was the one of one thousand people who would know the answer to that question. Even funnier is the fact that at first the Coyote Ugly sign in the window said it was “closed for remodeling” - Ha Ha how would you even remodel that crappy place? Would you perhaps clean the floor or something? It was just benches and a bar. Maybe they’d fix that dentist chair that the girls spun guys around in.

In the lower left, a photo of perhaps the worst remodeling job I have ever seen. This is a main street, Ohio in fact, and someone put the crappiest addition ever atop a brick building, and then festooned it with antennas. Why do we even pretend to have zoning laws? Worst yet, it looks awful from above, and unfortunately I can see it in all its glory every day right outside my balcony.

In the lower right, we walked by the Lincoln Restaurant, on the corner of Lincoln and Irving Park Road, and they have BANJO MONDAYS! Now that is a demographic I didn’t think was that popular in Chicago, but what the heck do I know, after all people drink PBR, too, and think that is cool nowadays.

Cross posted at LITGM

The Honduran legislature, judiciary and military, acting in support of the rule of law, have removed President Manuel Zelaya from office, and US President Obama wants none of it. Obama and the media have mischaracterized the events as a “coup d’etat” when they were really a last-ditch attempt by the Honduran political establishment to block Zelaya — who is being aided by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — from holding an illegal referendum in an attempt to circumvent term limits on his office. The Obama administration is siding with Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Chavez against the democratic Honduran government in an attempt to get Zelaya reinstated. (Mary O’Grady’s excellent column is a good summary of the events and issues. Fausta and Gateway Pundit have much additional information and links.)

The best that can be said about our president’s involvement in this issue is that it risks transforming a difficult situation into a disaster. Absent US pressure (never mind US support) the Honduran political scene would likely return to something like normal, with popular and media focus shifting from the deposed Zelaya to the coming elections. By getting involved in support of Zelaya we probably make a drawn-out crisis inevitable, and we green light further subversion of Honduran democracy by Chavez and Ortega. In the worst case a military insurgency or civil war supported by the dictators is conceivable. That would be a catastrophe.

Honduras is small, poor, weak, generally pro-USA and depends heavily on our trade and goodwill. The Obama administration may figure that it can push the Honduran government around, and that may be true. But why should we get involved at all? Obama could say that he supports Hondurans’ right to representative government, and that we will help if asked, and leave it at that. That would be prudent. Why does he instead prefer to step into mud of unknown depth?

I think the likely answer to this question is either that the Obama people don’t know what they are doing or that they are acting out of ideological bias. Ordinarily I would assume incompetence, and I think that Obama is indeed incompetent. But as with Obama’s hostile treatment of Israel — another small, pro-American country — the Obama administration’s incompetence in Central America follows a clear ideological pattern. Anyone who does not see by now that Obama is a determined leftist radical with a transformative national agenda that most Americans don’t want is either blind or not paying attention.

Seablogger puts it well WRT Honduras:

The terrible precedent will in fact be set if this would-be dictator and ally of Hugo Chavez is returned to power through US meddling, just days after Obama spurned any meddling with Iran.
 
Obama’s true affinities are now exposed for all to see. Take a look, Obama voters. Do you really want the US aligned with Castro and Chavez — actually doing their bidding? Do you want the US siding with the blood-stained regime in Teheran, for the sake of imaginary future diplomacy?

(See the Seablogger post for full context of the above quote.)

We are on course for disaster, all because so many American voters have had it so good for so long that they thought it would always be so, and that they could afford to throw away their votes on an attractive cipher.

UPDATE: See also this post at Power Line, and Babalu is on fire with many excellent posts about Honduras.

UPDATE 2: Caroline Glick reaches similar conclusions:

The only reasonable answer to all of these questions is that far from being nonideological, Obama’s foreign policy is the most ideologically driven since Carter’s tenure in office. If when Obama came into office there was a question about whether he was a foreign policy pragmatist or an ideologue, his behavior in his first six months in office has dispelled all doubt. Obama is moved by a radical, anti-American ideology that motivates him to dismiss the importance of democracy and side with anti-American dictators against US allies.

UPDATE 3: Andy McCarthy on Obama and Iran:

The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left : He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment over what he chooses to see in America’s history, but a “pragmatist” in the sense that where ideology and power collide (as they are apt to do when your ideology becomes less popular the more people understand it), Obama will always give ground on ideology (as little as circumstances allow) in order to maintain his grip on power.
 
[...]
 
It’s a mistake to perceive this as “weakness” in Obama. It would have been weakness for him to flit over to the freedom fighters’ side the minute it seemed politically expedient. He hasn’t done that, and he won’t. Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That’s not weakness, it’s strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.

I did not even know the Feelies were playing in Chicago tonight. The boss was on the way out of the office, and said he was going to walk over and see them. I said, “tell me about it tomorrow”. I wanted to finish something up, and I was working away. The phone rings. The boss says, “you should come over here”. Groovy.

They were excellent. I never saw them play before, but I had their first album, Crazy Rhythms, which I probably got in 1981 or 1982. “Have”, actually. It must be in the basement with the rest of my vinyl.

They played mostly songs from later albums which I did not know. Then, for an encore they did “Boxcars” by REM, “Fa Cé-La” off of the first album, then a killer cover of What Goes On by the Velvet Underground. I was thinking, the only way they can top that is with a Stones cover. What a musical genius I am. The crowd shouted them back for a second encore and they did “Paint it, Black”.

I was hoping they would do Moscow Nights, but I cannot complain.

The crowd was sitting down in the seats. Then near the end of the set, this skinny, intense, young guy comes running down front and starts dancing frantically all by himself. The ice is broken, the space in front of the stage and the aisles fill up with people.

A beautiful, cool evening in Chicago, at the Pritzker Bandshell in the very lovely Millenium Park. It was a large, happy, well-behaved crowd. It is good to see a band like the Feelies getting that much love. They were never big “back in the day”. They are a great band and they deserve the affection and the big turnout.

UPDATE: Greg Kot’s review from the Trib.

UPDATE II: Thank you, mysterious gangly kid! — Agreed. (Lots of photos)

One of my favorite quotes (I don’t even know if it’s true) is supposedly from Jack Welch and it is about how he got rid of his forecasting department:

We might be surprised, but we won’t be surprised we’re surprised

Businesses are often surprised by changes to the environment, even while they tout their ability to master the situation. One company I used to work with had a joint venture with CISCO in the dot.com era - at the time CISCO was touting their advanced financial capabilities, their ability to close the books a few days after quarter end, and most importantly their supply chain mastery that allowed them to accurately forecast demand. Almost immediately after that period of boasting, CISCO had a big inventory write down since they built too far ahead of demand and had to scrap the unsold goods and materials.
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State Tax Review:

Given the recent financial events that have hit Wall Street, real estate, and the average American consumer, the purpose of this post is to look at how our largest states have responded to this fiscal crisis with regards to tax policy. Let’s start with California.

For some background - here is a high level overview of state income taxes (circa 2006, hasn’t changed much since then on a relative basis). If you go to this section at LITGM you can see all of the tax posts we have put up over the years that cover similar topics.

California:

California is governed by a solid Democratic majority with a Republican governor. The California situation is different than most states in that a 2/3 majority is needed for tax increases, meaning that tax increases are difficult to pass through the legislature. California also has a “proposition” culture, where items are put directly to the voters (such as the famous “Proposition 13” which limited growth in property taxes).

California has a very high “graduated” state income tax (meaning that it is tied to the Federal tax liability, with some exceptions) and this forms a significant portion of their total tax collections. Per this very helpful site, in 2008 47.5% of their total tax revenues came from the state income tax, above the average of 35.7% for all states as a whole. However, this percentage is lower than its total impact - some states (like Illinois) have an essentially “flat” 3% state income tax (at 32% of Illinois state tax burden), but California’s is graduated so that they are taking 9.3% on all “taxable income” > $47,000 and another 1% on all income > $1,000,000, making their total tax burden at 10.3% for the highest earners. California is proposing to increase this rate (highest in the US of major states) by an additional 0.25% with their latest budget proposals, to a high of 10.55% (the 0.25% increase was part of Proposition 1A, which was defeated).

Reliance on a high, graduated state income tax is a two-edged sword - during “boom” times (such as the latest economic expansion) high income payers contribute a disproportionate amount to the budget (relative to other states) - but when the stock option gains evaporated starting in 2008, this portion of the state receipts is hit harder than other sorts of taxes (sales taxes, property taxes, gasoline taxes) because income and gains can fall rapidly which immediately reduces collections.

California immediate reached for the lever of increasing sales taxes as soon as the recession hit, raising the state portion from 7.25% to 8.25%, with local additions rising it up to 10.25% in some areas. Raising sales taxes is generally viewed as a “regressive” tax measure, because it hits the poorest hardest because they consume a higher percentage of their total earnings than the rich (the 1% increase was also defeated with proposition 1A).

California also has a very high corporate tax, at 8.84%, which makes up 10% of their total tax receipts. This rate is the highest in the nation, making it a dis-incentive for businesses to move into the state (unless they are able to reduce their Federal tax burden, which will result in tax relief, through various tax strategies).

The Tax Foundation (a non-profit group) wrote an excellent analysis of the California tax situation here. Per the Tax Foundation:

These tax increases are estimated to raise $10 billion, with the extensions from Proposition 1A generating a further $6 billion. California has been struggling to close a $40 billion budget gap between desired spending and expected revenues in its $92 billion 2009-10 budget.

Proposition 1A was defeated, leaving the state’s finances in a precarious state as far as balance of payments, although the state faced a huge budget gap in any case.
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While reading this story about changes in the water rights laws of western states, [h/t Instapundit] this bit at the end caught my eye.

Ms. Fitzgerald, an associate professor of sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, still lives the unwired life with her own family now, growing most of her own food and drinking and bathing in filtered rainwater.
 
Rain dependency has its ups and downs, Ms. Fitzgerald said. Her home is also completely solar-powered, which means that the pumps to push water from the rain tanks are solar-powered, too. A cloudy, rainy spring this year was good for tanks, bad for pumps.

*Sigh* Somebody actually designed a solar powered system to pump water out of a rain filled system. Somebody voted for Obama. 

The entire point of energy systems is to shift work in time and space to when and where we need it. Weather-dependent energy sources can’t shift work in time and space. Instead, the work happens when and where the weather wants it to happen. Weather-dependent energy systems cannot perform this most basic task of shifting work and that is why they are worthless for any large-scale use. 

I mean, if weather-dependent power can’t meet the needs of a hippy college professor, why do people think we can run factories, transportation and hospitals with it? 

[By the way, the water rights laws of the American West might seem bizarre but they do make sense in the context of the region's historical development.]

Or perhaps I should say we got dragged into the Village Voice. They linked to Jonathan’s post:  Michael Jackson’s Death: A Media-Driven National Disaster. Apparently, the Village Voice is amused that non-leftists are upset that Jackson’s death is distracting the media away from more real concerns.

When I grew up I played a little bit of soccer. This was a long time ago and I was not particularly talented. Our team was better than most in the Chicago area because two German-born children of the coach of the long-defunct Chicago Sting also played alongside us and clearly led the team. I’m sure as actual German soccer players 30+ years ago they must have thought our soccer skills were absolutely pathetic, in contrast with European standards of the day.

There have long been debates on the (low) popularity of soccer in the United States, along with hand-wringing about the cause and various opinions on all sides. I haven’t paid too much attention to the debate but I was on vacation in Italy when the US team tied Italy in 2007 and I did feel good at the time (it was quite a shock to the locals, I’ll tell you).

Over the years soccer has grown as a youth sport and also as a competitive sport. The Chicago Fire soccer team actually is able to draw a decent crowd. In Chicago we have a vast foreign born population and whenever there is an important match on overseas our local bars pick up the games on satellite and are packed full of hard drinkers in bar wear for their favorite team.

The US beat Spain recently in a huge upset that did get some press. To say the team from Spain was favored is to vastly understate the scale of the upset; some compared it to the US defeat of the USSR in 1980 in ice hockey.
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A young lad loves a maiden
she likes another one
that other marries another
whose heart and hand he won

It is an old, old story
yet new with every start,
and every time it happens
it breaks a loving heart.

–Heinrich Heine

Poetry, of course, is notoriously difficult to translate. The Heine translations of which the above is an example (done by Max Knight and Joseph Fabry) are among the fairly rare examples in which the poem as rendered in the target language preserves much of the rhyme and rhythm of the original. This is done, though, at the sacrifice of precision of meaning: even with my mostly-forgotten high school and college German, I can tell that the line

Dem bricht das Herz entzwei

doesn’t say anything about “breaking a loving heart”–rather, if refers to “breaking a heart in two.” Also, the translation uses some rather strange English phrasings (new with every start?) Still, though, I think this kind of translation is a very nice supplement to the more-precise-but-drier translations which seem to be much more common.

A few more Heine poems from the same translators:
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There has been a bear sighting in the Cleveland area.

Now, God bless ‘em, local TV crews need work too, but someone please tell me that this is a joke.

As a side note, my grandmother still lives in the northwoods of Wisconsin and black bear sightings have been common up there for a very long time. They love garbage and even knock down my grandmother’s bird feeder from time to time.