Pirate(s) Finances - Gladwell's Law #0001

Malcolm Gladwell's Law - Journalists need to have a better grasp of financial figures in order to truly understand some of their subjects.

A good place to analyze how a better understanding of finances could impact a journalist's work is an article by Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review back in April 2008. As someone who was been scouring the web for clues about MLB finances for the past two years, I can tell you that this article represented a real opening in the secretive world of MLB finances. I wrote this post shortly afterwards. Mr. Biertempfel got the Pittsburgh Pirates President Frank Coonnelly to disclose the following items which few teams ever publicly admit or even discuss:

• Amount expected to be received in Revenue Sharing for 2008 - $35 million.
• Team had debts which exceeded $100 million and the interest payments were between $5 and $7 million yearly.
• That the CBA language as to the use of revenue sharing monies -- "to be used to improve on field performance" -- would not preclude the Pirates from using those monies to pay down team debt.
• Although Coonnelly states that the "Forbes numbers are never right," Coonnelly does not take issue with Forbes estimate of the Pirates operating profits for 2006 [$25 million], given that he agrees that it was the "highest [operating] profit recent season" for the Pirates and that he "didn't expect to be seeing $25 million in operating profits [in the future]."

How a financial background could have affected the questions or focus of this article.

1. Coonelly states: "Team is paying down debt and reinvesting in the club, not spinning off money to ownership." It matters greatly the source of the debt being paid down. If the debt being paid down was incurred as part of the purchase of the franchise, then paying down debt is an indirect way of enriching ownership.
2. What does Mr. Coonnelly mean by 'spinning off?' Selling off interest in the franchise or the owners salary? What is the owners salary? Is it tied to performance [a little sarcastic in the case of the Pirates, but still a legitimate question]?
3. Coonelly states: "When interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are thrown into the mix, said the Pirates rank 27th in revenue." Those non-operating expense items [interest, depreciation and amortization] would affect net income, but not revenues or even the operating profits. Forbes does not disclose net income.
4. Given that Forbes employs the same methodology yearly, how likely is it for Forbes to have materially erred on determining operating profits in 2007, given that 2006 was accurate?
5. The article glossed over the fact that the team purchased for $92 million in 1996 was now estimated to be worth $292 in 2008. The fact that their investment in the team had tripled in value -- largely due to the fact that a new stadium was built for them with a minimal investment by the franchise [net of $14 million] -- means that the team literally has been handed house [or PNC] money to play with.
6. How reliable are Forbes estimates? The less complicated the finances of a franchise, the more accurate Forbes can be. Franchises who don't own their RSN's [like the Pirates and Marlins] are easier to calculate. Forbes estimate of the Marlins worth was 97% accurate when compared to the value ascribed to the franchise in the team's stadium agreement deal with local governments in early 2009.

OK, this is the fun part. $100 million in debt? From where?

Keep the following in mind:

• Team purchased in 1996 for $92 million.
• Team assumed debt from the URA totaling $29 million initially and an additional debt of $11.5 million in 2000. However, that is a debt which does not have to be repaid unless the team moves. The URA writes off roughly $2 million of that debt yearly.
• Technically, the Pirates still have to disclose that debt on financial statements until it is actually written off, however it is clearly misleading to include that amount when disclosing debt, while ignoring the fact that the debt does not have to be repaid.
• $100 million in debt and interest payments between $5 and $7 million would indicate that the team pays between 5 & 7% in interest rates, which is reasonable.
• But if they are including the URA debt in the $100 million figure, then the reported $5 to $7 million in interest payments makes no sense, since the URA debt does not require interest payments. The interest is added to the principal and will be written off as well.
• The Pirates operating profits since 1998 total $98 million. Only one year in that period showed an operating loss.
• The Pirates net contribution towards the stadium was a net of $14 million, since naming rights were used to offset scheduled team contributions.

Bottom Line: The Pittsburgh Pirates use of revenue sharing monies to pay down team debt is very likely an indirect method of enriching ownership, when a part [or a majority] of the $100 million in debt could only have originated from the team's purchase.

Pretend that a generous neighbor on your block gave you $10,000 yearly to "improve the look" of your home. Imagine further that you turned around and paid down the principal on your mortgage instead of fixing up your property. Could you convince that neighbor that his monies didn't go into your pocket? If you could, you are ready to be a MLB executive.

Click on the spreadsheet to enlarge or print


The Biertempfel article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Profitable Pirates to pay down huge debt
By Rob Biertempfel
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, April 18, 2008

The Pittsburgh Pirates turned a profit in 2007 -- the franchise's fourth consecutive year in the black -- and will do so again this year, regardless of how many games they win or lose.

Team President Frank Coonelly said the profit will be used to pay down the franchise's debt, which will help field a better team in the future. The Pirates have endured 15 consecutive losing seasons.

According to Forbes Magazine's annual team valuations, the Pirates' 2007 operating income was $17.6 million. That ranks 18th among the 30 major league clubs. Forbes estimated the team's value at $292 million, putting it at No. 28 among the 30 major league clubs.

"Their numbers are never right," Coonelly said Thursday. "But, we are profitable."

Coonelly said the Pirates' actual profit is much lower, taking into account annual interest payments of "over $5 million, maybe approaching $7 million" on the franchise's $100 million-plus in debts.

When interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are thrown into the mix, Coonelly said the Pirates rank 27th in revenue.

The Pirates expect to receive about $35 million this year through Major League Baseball's revenue-sharing system, Coonelly said, adding that it's incorrect to believe that money must be used only to increase player payroll.

"The revenue-sharing plan says you have to use those proceeds to improve your performance on the field," Coonelly said. "That's written extraordinarily broadly, and we did that on purpose. Paying down debt can help you improve on the field. You can't get any better while you're taking a (huge) interest hit on all the debt you have. You can't be building an academy in the Dominican Republic. You can't be improving Pirate City. You can't be spending on major league payroll."

This year, the Pirates broke ground on a $5 million baseball academy in the Dominican. The club contributed $2 million of the $30 million necessary to renovate its spring training complex in Bradenton, Fla.

Coonelly denied that principal owner Bob Nutting is pocketing the Pirates' profits.

"We're paying down debt and reinvesting in the club, not spinning off money to ownership," Coonelly said. "If the Nutting family wanted to get into a business that would just spin off money, baseball would not be that business."

The sport is not necessarily a loser for owners, though. According to Forbes, Major League Baseball's profits increased 7.7 percent last year to $5.5 billion. The magazine estimates the average team is worth $472 million, a one-year hike of 9.5 percent.

The Forbes estimate means former owner Kevin McClatchy's purchase price of $92 million in 1996 was $200 million below its current value.

Where is all that money going? Not necessarily to the players. According to Forbes, player costs in Major League Baseball (salaries, bonuses and benefits) have fallen over the past five years from 66 percent of revenue to 56 percent.

In 2003, 16 teams lost money. Last year, only Toronto, Boston and the New York Yankees posted operating losses. But, Boston and New York recouped their losses with the dividends from their cable television deals.

Last year, Forbes reported the Pirates made $25.3 million profit in 2006, the year PNC Park hosted the All-Star Game.

"It was the highest-profit season in the recent past for the Pirates," Coonelly said. "I don't expect us to be seeing $25 million operating profits. I expect (growth), although I don't want to promise it."

Rob Biertempfel can be reached at rbiertempfel@tribweb.com
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Introduction To Malcolm Gladwell's Law

Malcolm Gladwell's Law - Journalists need to have a better grasp of financial figures in order to truly understand some of their subjects.

In an obvious desperate attempt to push my Google Analytics Direct Traffic into the triple digit stratosphere [the 2nd generation Kardashian Zone], best-selling writer Malcolm Gladwell has recommended that young journalists be more like your humble 2 Think Good blogger. I exaggerate, but not as much as you would think. Here is the portion of the interview which addresses young journalists:

Time magazine / Alex Altman: If you had a single piece of advice to offer young journalists, what would it be?

Malcolm Gladwell: The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

I intend to illustrate Mr Gladwell's point whenever possible. The complete Gladwell interview is copied in full at end of post.

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Author Interview: Malcolm Gladwell By Alex Altman
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009

With three best sellers to his credit, Malcolm Gladwell is one of the brightest stars in the media firmament. A British-born, Ontario-raised New Yorker staff writer and 2005 TIME 100 honoree, Gladwell's clear prose and knack for upending conventional wisdom across the social sciences have made The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, as well as his lengthy magazine features on topics ranging from cool-hunting to ketchup, into must reads. His new collection of New Yorker stories, titled What the Dog Saw, hit stores Oct. 20. Gladwell talked to TIME about experimenting with public education, the flaws in corporate hiring processes and the future of journalism.

Once you pick a story topic, what's your reporting process like?
It differs. I'm interested in placing things in a larger context and in making lateral connections. A lot of my process is informed by the notion that two mildly good stories put together sometimes equal one really good story. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's TIME 100 bio.)

Have you ever raised an idea in one of your pieces and then later — say, when a new nugget of information emerges — realized it was off the mark?
Yeah. Or, more often, additional evidence starts to pile up and you realize you just positioned the article the wrong way. In The Tipping Point, I would write the chapter about the decline of crime in New York differently, just because we know so much more about crime than we used to.

In your last book, Outliers, you talked about how success comes not just through genetics or hard work but through context — the situations we stumble into fortuitously. Can you talk a little bit about your own lucky breaks?
I've had millions. I was in one of the last generations to sign on with newspapers when newspapers were still hiring lots of young people. To go to the New Yorker and get the editor I got were lucky breaks. I'm also lucky to be an outsider in America. A lot of what Americans take for granted I think of as strange and weird. I still don't feel like I fully understand this country. (See the 100 best novels of all time.)

You've talked before about the deficiencies of the U.S. public-education system. If you were U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan — who has about $5 billion in discretionary funding and a mandate to fix our schools — what would you do?
There's precious little experimentation in education. Instead there seems to be a desire for greater regimentation, which I think is nonsense. I think we need to try 100 different things. If I were Arne Duncan, I'd think of myself as a venture capitalist, fund as many wacky and inventive ideas as I could, and closely monitor them to see how they worked.

I've always been fascinated by the idea that in inner-city schools, the thing they do best is sports. They do really, really well in sports. It's not correct to say these schools are dysfunctional; they're highly functional in certain areas. So I've always wondered about using the principles of sports in the classroom. Go same sex; do everything in teams; have teams compete with each other. I'd like to try that. I don't know whether it will work, but it's certainly worth a shot, and we could learn something really useful.

I'm curious about your take on the statistics revolution in baseball and, increasingly, basketball. You've cautioned against assessing players through measurements like height or arm strength. Some of the ideas in Blink would also seem to support old scouting models, in which you just take the guy who looks like he plays the best.
My take on it is that what you're looking for is a balance between these two things. I remember once having a conversation with a top executive with the Toronto Raptors. I asked her about the stats revolution in basketball and she just kind of shrugged and said, "It's interesting, and we look at those things, but you have to understand that for our purposes, it's all [about] character." The thing that separates players is that some have a work ethic, some don't; some are coachable, some aren't; some party all night, some go to bed early. From her standpoint, it's all those intangibles. (See the top 10 non-fiction books of 2008.)

But as a society, as you've pointed out, we're not very good at making these predictions. We use measurements like IQ or the SAT or the Wonderlic test, and we're unable to determine if a budding lawyer or a budding quarterback is going to be any good. How can we get better at making predictions?
Certain kinds of predictions are impossible. If you want to find out if someone can do the job, you have to let them do the job. We should be experimenting with people too. I feel very strongly about the notion that if you want to find the best teachers, you let everybody into the profession, monitor them for two years, and then pick the 10% that are the best. That's how you do it, and that's completely the opposite of the way we do it now. Right now we're acting out a fiction, which is that we can tell whether someone's good at this enormously complex thing called teaching before they've ever taught.

If you had a single piece of advice to offer young journalists, what would it be?
The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.
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Yankee Pride?

When I hear 'Yankee Pride,' I know that I'm dealing with people having a automatic stimulus–response. A nice and round happy memory from their childhood being revived, which they now attempt to fit into the square peg which is the 2009 Yankees. While I have nothing against nostalgia, pride is not something which the 2009 Yankees are worthy of.

In fact, to quote Jack Woltz, 'just to show you that I'm not a hard-hearted man,' I share the following: The first book I remember loving -- I was probably a 5th grader at Citrus Grove Elementary at the time -- was one that covered the history of the World Series. If I try real hard, I can remember the great smell of that [it turns out] small oval library just off 22nd Avenue and NW 3rd Street. I can still remember the excitement of going back to that book again and again. Grover Cleveland Alexander, Babe Ruth, The Gas House Gang, Yogi Berra all came alive, seemingly just for me, because certainly no one around me seemed to realize the great stories that were unfolding before me. What if all those other books had stories like these? I remember desperately wanting to read faster as I kept glancing up at the clock, until finally realizing that I just would would not make it to the next World Series that day. I couldn't believe that those Yankees kept winning year after year. I thought they were great. Then when I got home, my father was a huge Yankee fan who revered Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle and would never forget watching Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956. I loved the Yankees too. That was then.

Here is my best analogy to being a fan of the 2009 Yankees. An adult who has hacked his way into a fantasy baseball league intended for first graders. His dealings with the kids are best exemplified by the one transaction in which he got a kid to trade him Alex Rodriguez for Coco Crisp, since he knew the kid loved his dog named Coco. The adult wins the fantasy league and at the Chucky Cheese award ceremony, guarantees another championship the following year, taunting one of the kids who had broken down and cried.

An organization whose yearly off-season strategy is to sign the best available pitchers and hitters from the preceding year is many things, but not one worthy of the type of sentimental attachment denoted by the phrase 'Yankee Pride.' To equate a sentiment born of a Lou Gehrig to the current bunch of 1099 contractors occupying the jerseys is to miss the mark more egregiously than your typical MLB umpire.

To be clear -- MLB needs the New York Yankees and the New York Yankees need the rest of MLB -- especially those of us at the other end of the revenue spectrum - heck how many times do you really want them to play the Boston Red Sox. But MLB is much better off when their fantasy league-type strategy fails to succeed.

Ladies and Gentlemen
Meet your new 2010 Yankees
Albert Pujols and Zack Greinke!

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Poem From An Alzheimers Patient

I was moved by the poem copied below, from a local paper in North Carlina, on Kathy Hatfield's blog. Ms Hatfield offers all sorts of information for caregivers dealing with patient's with dementia. The poem:

DO NOT ASK ME TO REMEMBER.
DON'T TRY TO MAKE ME UNDERSTAND.
LET ME REST AND KNOW YOU'RE WITH ME.
KISS MY CHEEK AND HOLD MY HAND.

I'M SO CONFUSED BEYOND YOUR CONCEPT.
I AM SAD AND SICK AND LOST.
ALL I KNOW IS THAT I NEED YOU.
TO BE WITH ME AT ALL COST.

SO DO NOT LOSE YOUR PATIENCE WITH ME.
DO NOT SCOLD OR CURSE OR CRY.
I CAN'T HELP THE WAY I'M ACTING.
CAN'T BE DIFFERENT THOUGH I TRY.

JUST REMEMBER THAT I NEED YOU,
THAT THE BEST OF ME IS GONE.
PLEASE DON'T FAIL TO STAND BESIDE ME,
LOVE ME 'TIL MY LIFE IS GONE.

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Goodwill To Die For

Former US attorney general, Michael Mukasey, makes an argument in the WSJ of why civilian courts are not the place to try terrorists:

It was anticipated that if those detainees were to be tried at all, it would be before a military commission where the touchstone for admissibility of evidence was simply relevance and apparent reliability. Thus, the circumstances of their capture on the battlefield could be described by affidavit if necessary, without bringing to court the particular soldier or unit that effected the capture, so long as the affidavit and surrounding circumstances appeared reliable. No such procedure would be permitted in an ordinary civilian court.

Moreover, it appears likely that certain charges could not be presented in a civilian court because the proof that would have to be offered could, if publicly disclosed, compromise sources and methods of intelligence gathering. The military commissions regimen established for use at Guantanamo was designed with such considerations in mind. It provided a way of handling classified information so as to make it available to a defendant's counsel while preserving confidentiality. The courtroom facility at Guantanamo was constructed, at a cost of millions of dollars, specifically to accommodate the handling of classified information and the heightened security needs of a trial of such defendants.

Nevertheless, critics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents. True, this won us a great deal of goodwill abroad—people around the globe lined up for blocks outside our embassies to sign the condolence books. That is the kind of goodwill we can do without.

When does the Obama administration's default option of pursuing goodwill, at the expense of security [what else?], become irresponsible, not just naive?

Mukasey's WSJ article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Civilian Courts Are No Place to Try Terrorists
We tried the first World Trade Center bombers in civilian courts. In return we got 9/11 and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents.

By MICHAEL B. MUKASEY - OCTOBER 19, 2009

The Obama administration has said it intends to try several of the prisoners now detained at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courts in this country. This would include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and other detainees allegedly involved. The Justice Department claims that our courts are well suited to the task.

Based on my experience trying such cases, and what I saw as attorney general, they aren't. That is not to say that civilian courts cannot ever handle terrorist prosecutions, but rather that their role in a war on terror—to use an unfashionably harsh phrase—should be, as the term "war" would suggest, a supporting and not a principal role.

The challenges of a terrorism trial are overwhelming. To maintain the security of the courthouse and the jail facilities where defendants are housed, deputy U.S. marshals must be recruited from other jurisdictions; jurors must be selected anonymously and escorted to and from the courthouse under armed guard; and judges who preside over such cases often need protection as well. All such measures burden an already overloaded justice system and interfere with the handling of other cases, both criminal and civil.

Moreover, there is every reason to believe that the places of both trial and confinement for such defendants would become attractive targets for others intent on creating mayhem, whether it be terrorists intent on inflicting casualties on the local population, or lawyers intent on filing waves of lawsuits over issues as diverse as whether those captured in combat must be charged with crimes or released, or the conditions of confinement for all prisoners, whether convicted or not.

Even after conviction, the issue is not whether a maximum-security prison can hold these defendants; of course it can. But their presence even inside the walls, as proselytizers if nothing else, is itself a danger. The recent arrest of U.S. citizen Michael Finton, a convert to Islam proselytized in prison and charged with planning to blow up a building in Springfield, Ill., is only the latest example of that problem.

Moreover, the rules for conducting criminal trials in federal courts have been fashioned to prosecute conventional crimes by conventional criminals. Defendants are granted access to information relating to their case that might be useful in meeting the charges and shaping a defense, without regard to the wider impact such information might have. That can provide a cornucopia of valuable information to terrorists, both those in custody and those at large.

Thus, in the multidefendant terrorism prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others that I presided over in 1995 in federal district court in Manhattan, the government was required to disclose, as it is routinely in conspiracy cases, the identity of all known co-conspirators, regardless of whether they are charged as defendants. One of those co-conspirators, relatively obscure in 1995, was Osama bin Laden. It was later learned that soon after the government's disclosure the list of unindicted co-conspirators had made its way to bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, where he then resided. He was able to learn not only that the government was aware of him, but also who else the government was aware of.

It is not simply the disclosure of information under discovery rules that can be useful to terrorists. The testimony in a public trial, particularly under the probing of appropriately diligent defense counsel, can elicit evidence about means and methods of evidence collection that have nothing to do with the underlying issues in the case, but which can be used to press government witnesses to either disclose information they would prefer to keep confidential or make it appear that they are concealing facts. The alternative is to lengthen criminal trials beyond what is tolerable by vetting topics in closed sessions before they can be presented in open ones.

In June, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the transfer of Ahmed Ghailani to this country from Guantanamo. Mr. Ghailani was indicted in connection with the 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He was captured in 2004, after others had already been tried here for that bombing.

Mr. Ghailani was to be tried before a military commission for that and other war crimes committed afterward, but when the Obama administration elected to close Guantanamo, the existing indictment against Mr. Ghailani in New York apparently seemed to offer an attractive alternative. It may be as well that prosecuting Mr. Ghailani in an already pending case in New York was seen as an opportunity to illustrate how readily those at Guantanamo might be prosecuted in civilian courts. After all, as Mr. Holder said in his June announcement, four defendants were "successfully prosecuted" in that case.

It is certainly true that four defendants already were tried and sentenced in that case. But the proceedings were far from exemplary. The jury declined to impose the death penalty, which requires unanimity, when one juror disclosed at the end of the trial that he could not impose the death penalty—even though he had sworn previously that he could. Despite his disclosure, the juror was permitted to serve and render a verdict.

Mr. Holder failed to mention it, but there was also a fifth defendant in the case, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. He never participated in the trial. Why? Because, before it began, in a foiled attempt to escape a maximum security prison, he sharpened a plastic comb into a weapon and drove it through the eye and into the brain of Louis Pepe, a 42-year-old Bureau of Prisons guard. Mr. Pepe was blinded in one eye and rendered nearly unable to speak.

Salim was prosecuted separately for that crime and found guilty of attempted murder. There are many words one might use to describe how these events unfolded; "successfully" is not among them.

The very length of Mr. Ghailani's detention prior to being brought here for prosecution presents difficult issues. The Speedy Trial Act requires that those charged be tried within a relatively short time after they are charged or captured, whichever comes last. Even if the pending charge against Mr. Ghailani is not dismissed for violation of that statute, he may well seek access to what the government knows of his activities after the embassy bombings, even if those activities are not charged in the pending indictment. Such disclosures could seriously compromise sources and methods of intelligence gathering.

Finally, the government (for undisclosed reasons) has chosen not to seek the death penalty against Mr. Ghailani, even though that penalty was sought, albeit unsuccessfully, against those who stood trial earlier. The embassy bombings killed more than 200 people.

Although the jury in the earlier case declined to sentence the defendants to death, that determination does not bind a future jury. However, when the government determines not to seek the death penalty against a defendant charged with complicity in the murder of hundreds, that potentially distorts every future capital case the government prosecutes. Put simply, once the government decides not to seek the death penalty against a defendant charged with mass murder, how can it justify seeking the death penalty against anyone charged with murder—however atrocious—on a smaller scale?

Even a successful prosecution of Mr. Ghailani, with none of the possible obstacles described earlier, would offer no example of how the cases against other Guantanamo detainees can be handled. The embassy bombing case was investigated for prosecution in a court, with all of the safeguards in handling evidence and securing witnesses that attend such a prosecution. By contrast, the charges against other detainees have not been so investigated.

It was anticipated that if those detainees were to be tried at all, it would be before a military commission where the touchstone for admissibility of evidence was simply relevance and apparent reliability. Thus, the circumstances of their capture on the battlefield could be described by affidavit if necessary, without bringing to court the particular soldier or unit that effected the capture, so long as the affidavit and surrounding circumstances appeared reliable. No such procedure would be permitted in an ordinary civilian court.

Moreover, it appears likely that certain charges could not be presented in a civilian court because the proof that would have to be offered could, if publicly disclosed, compromise sources and methods of intelligence gathering. The military commissions regimen established for use at Guantanamo was designed with such considerations in mind. It provided a way of handling classified information so as to make it available to a defendant's counsel while preserving confidentiality. The courtroom facility at Guantanamo was constructed, at a cost of millions of dollars, specifically to accommodate the handling of classified information and the heightened security needs of a trial of such defendants.

Nevertheless, critics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents. True, this won us a great deal of goodwill abroad—people around the globe lined up for blocks outside our embassies to sign the condolence books. That is the kind of goodwill we can do without.

Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009.
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Who Was Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt?

David McCullough's inspiring book -- Brave Companions - Portraits in History -- shines a light on an amazing scientist and explorer, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt [Baron von Humboldt to his friends]. When McCullough writes, " ... like Halley's comet or the white whale or other such natural phenomena dear to the nineteenth century, he would be remembered by all who saw him for the rest of their days," this is what he meant; a recap of FWHAFvH's life mixed with McCullough descriptions in quotes:

• 1769 - Born in Berlin - "... he was a baron in about the way some Southerners are colonels"
• During his youth, developed a penchant for collecting and labeling plants, shells, and insects.
• With the purpose of preparing himself for a distinctive calling as a scientific explorer, he studied commerce, foreign languages, geology, anatomy, astrology and the use of scientific instruments.
• 1790 - Published treatise on scientific excursion taken up the Rhine.
• 1792 - Appointed government inspector of mines in Prussia [Berlin].
• 1793 - Published research on the vegetation of the mines of Freiberg.
• 1795 - Made a geological and botanical tour through Switzerland and Italy.
• 1796 - Upon the death of his mother [father had died in 1779], his inheritance gave him "the means to do whatever he wished."
• 1797 - Published research on experiments on the phenomena of muscular irritability.
• 1798 - Set to be part of Captain Nicolas Baudin's proposed voyage of circumnavigation leaving from Paris, however the expedition was canceled.
• 1799 - Humboldt left Paris for Marseille with Aimé Bonpland, the designated botanist of the frustrated expedition, hoping to join Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt. However, they could not find transportation.
• 1799 - Arrived in Madrid, where the unexpected patronage of the minister Don Mariano Luis de Urquijo convinced them to make Spanish America the scene of their explorations.
• 1799 - During an audience with King Charles IV, an expedition, to be paid for by Humboldt, was immediately and unexpectedly sanctioned.

You can just feel McCullough's excitement [and your own I would hope] as he describes the amazing chain of events:

... Humboldt and Bonpland departed from La Coruña, Spain, in June 1799, on a Spanish frigate, slipping past a British blockade in the dark of night, in the midst of a storm, and carrying with him a unique document from the Spanish government. He and Bonpland had been granted complete freedom to explore -- for scientific purposes -- any or all of Spain's largely unexplored American colonies; to make astronomical observations, maps; to collect; to go wherever they wished, speak to whomever they wished. The whole arrangement was quite unprecedented (prior to this Spain had rigorously denied any such travels by foreigners), and it had come about quite by chance.

Fast forward five years. The 34 year old German arrives at the White House to meet a fan, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had just purchased a large part of the North American continent from Napoleon the previous year, and had just sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to investigate -- whose journey McCullough notes, "could not compare to Humboldt's in scientific consequence" -- Jefferson was not alone in his admiration, the list would come to include John James Audubon, Simón Bolívar, Charles Darwin etc.

What happened next? What did Humboldt and Bonpland see? McCullough again on how it began, it would end in Havana in 1804:

They landed [in New Granada or Venezuela], bag and baggage, on July 16, 1799. Their gear included forty-odd scientific instruments, the most versatile and finest available at the time and just the sort of thing Thomas Jefferson would have found fascinating. Included were a tiny, two-inch sextant, compasses, a microscope , barometers and thermometers that had been standardized with those of the Paris observatory before departure, three different kinds of electrometers, a device for measuring the specific gravity of seawater, telescopes, a theodolite, a Leyden jar, an instrument by which the blueness of the sky could be determined, a large and cumbersome magnetometer, and a rain gauge. Their excitement was enormous. No botanist, no naturalist or scientist of any kind, had ever been there before them. Everything was new, even the stars in the sky. "We are here in a divine country," Humboldt wrote to his brother. "What trees! Coconut trees, fifty to sixty feet high, Poinciana pulcherrima, with a foot-high bouquet of magnificent, bright-red flowers; pisang and a host of trees with enormous leaves and scented flowers, as big as the palm of a hand, of which we knew nothing ... And what colors in birds, fish, even crayfish (sky blue and yellow)! we rush around like the demented; in the first three days we were quite unable to classify anything; we pick up one object to throw it away for the next. Bonpland keeps telling me that he will go mad if the wonders do not cease soon."

What happened in Havana? This from the Wikipedia page:

Humboldt is considered to be the "second discoverer of Cuba" due to all the scientific and social research he conducted on this Spanish colony. During an initial three-month stay at Havana, his first tasks were to properly survey that city and the nearby towns of Guanabacoa, Regla and Bejucal. He befriended Cuban landowner and thinker Francisco Arrango y Parreño; together they visited the Guines area in south Havana, the valleys of Matanzas Province, and the Valley of the Sugar Mills in Trinidad. Those three areas were, at the time, the first frontier of sugar production in the island. During those trips, Humboldt collected statistical information on Cuba's population, production, technology and trade, and with Arrango, made suggestions for enhancing them. He predicted that the agricultural and commercial potential of Cuba was huge and could be vastly improved with proper leadership in the future. After traveling to America, Humboldt returned to Cuba for a second, shorter stay in April 1804. During this time he socialized with his scientific and landowner friends, conducted mineralogical surveys and finished his vast collection of the island's flora and fauna.

Geez, I'm happy when I get to bike ride in the mornings.

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Al Gore: Snakeoil Salesman Extraordinaire

Al Gore speech from September 2005 speech:

Now, the scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming. A scientist at MIT has published a study well before this tragedy showing that since the 1970s, hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific have increased in duration, and in intensity, by about 50%. ... The waters in the gulf have been unusually warm. The oceans generally have been getting warmer. And the pattern is exactly consistent with what scientists have predicted for twenty years. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming. [applause] It is important to learn the lessons of what happens when scientific evidence and clear authoritative warnings are ignored in order to induce our leaders not to do it again and not to ignore the scientists again and not to leave us unprotected in the face of those threats that are facing us right now. [applause]
...
The President says that he is not sure that global warming is a real threat. ... He tells us that he believes the science of global warming is in dispute. ... It's important to establish accountability in order to make our democracy work.

This from a recent Reuters article about the 'Quiet Hurricane Season:'

"There was for all intents and purposes no hurricane damage in the United States this year," Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, told Reuters.
...
Forecasters saw nothing on the horizon on Wednesday.

"El Nino produced an increase in wind shear," said meteorologist Todd Crawford of private forecaster WSI Corp.

"If you have an increase in the speed of the winds aloft over the Atlantic it acts to basically chop the heads off any kinds of storms," he said. Wind shear is a technical term for different wind speeds at different altitudes.

Crawford also said sea temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are cooler, by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.12 degrees Celsius) on average, than the blistering seasons of 2004, when four hurricanes hit Florida, and 2005, which produced 28 storms, the highest single-season total in recorded history.

Hurricanes draw energy from warm water, so cooler sea temperatures can mean fewer and less intense storms.

Real accountability should mean that people like Gore -- who struck when the moment was ripe [just after Katrina], just like snakeoil salesmen no doubt proliferated after diseases affected a region -- owe his audience an explanation. One that apologizes for the hyperbole. One that acknowledges that predictions -- even the 'most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind' -- are still just that, predictions. Which are the result of a particular set of data and a particular type of analysis applied by people trying to advance a particular point of view.

Then again, there is probably a good reason snakeoil salesman keep moving from town to town. Heck, Al's got himself new stuff in his wagon nowadays. Caveat emptor dude.

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New York Jets = Retama de Guayacol

Retama de Guayacol = The underside of the barnacles which attach themselves to ships, I think. Whatever the precise meaning is, it ain't a compliment.

How do the New York Jets do it? How do they retain the ability and disposition to choke despite significantly turning over their roster and coaching staff? That only happens when failure is deeply ingrained in an organization. Reverting to their DNA figuratively, and literally in the case of Jets cornerbacks who increasingly assumed the fetal position as they saw Jake Long and Lousaka Polite come around the corners last night.

Is there anything more enjoyable than watching professional New York sports teams fail? Not just fail, but fail in a gut-wrenching fashion. Fail in a way which should make their fans vomit as if they were Andy Dufresne having been made to double-back through the Maine penitentiary sewer system because he turned the wrong way early on. Fail in a hide the weapons -- those kept at home, as opposed to the ones they take to nightclubs -- kinda way. In the case of the New York Jets coach Rex Ryan, it would be a fail in a hide the Twinkies and adult magazines kinda way.

Last night's Miami Dolphins victory over the scum-bag choking-dog of a franchise New York Jets was an absolute pleasure to watch. The only way it could have been more enjoyable was if Rex Ryan would have required the use of a defibrillator on the field after the final Ronnie Brown touchdown -- as part of a non-life threatening medical event of course.

Heaven knows I would not want anything serious to happen to Ryan which would prevent him from coaching the Jets for a very long time. Ryan, a self-proclaimed defensive genius through the first 4 weeks of the season -- after having been a genius defensive coordinator with a defense which featured UM greats, Ray Lewis and Ed Reed -- was thoroughly out-coached. The Dolphins stuffed the ball so far down the throat of his defense that the laces on the ball likely lacerated at least one kidney on those Jets defenders who weren't bailing to avoid the trucks named Brown and Williams running them over.

Ryan's incompetence was not limited to the playing field. He began his post-game news conference by noting that his defense was an embarrassment which made Chad Henne look like Dan Marino. [You would think the latest Ryan family loud-mouth NFL coach would be used to embarrassing performances in Miami on Monday nights.] He then rambled on for a few minutes and eventually wrapped up in that convoluted coach-speak one-generation-removed-from-Deliverance monologue about how 'ya gotta give the other team credit and we gotta get ready for next week.' To summarize:

• Initial reaction failed to credit other team - check
• Insulted player who just posted a 130 QB rating - check
• Ripped team unit he coaches - check
• Expressed bafflement over the performance of the unit he is responsible for - check
• Came to the realization - literally while answering a question -- that he failed in the most elementary of coaching responsibilities -- using time-outs to allow his team to have time to respond in case the Dolphins scored. Ryan actually said that his reason for not using time-outs was that 'he just never thought the Dolphins would score.'

While the ultimate gift to any rival franchise is having Al Davis as an owner with enough money to purchase medicine that extends his working lifetime, Rex Ryan is the next best thing. Thank you New York Jets management.

Message to that NY Jets loving of a suck-up ESPN analyst, Jon Gruden, whose man-crush borderline homoerotic effusive praise of that team had me putting my kids and one elderly adult to bed early: At least Chucky had the good sense to shut up until the sequel. Gruden was so over the top in his adulation, it is rumored that MSNBC hosts called en masse to complain about excessive obsequiousness. One more thing Chucky, that stripe running down the uniform of Jets defensive back Darrelle Revis, was the mark left when Ted Ginn blew past the "league's ultimate shut-down corner." Would it really have killed you to note that Revis resembled Rick Volk trying to chase down Paul Warfield on that play?

Message #2: Yankee fans and Mariano Rivera, enjoy his last days of pain-free pitching.

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Regan and Alzheimer's

Not a typo, I meant Regan, not the great Ronald Reagan.

Like most people, I have had family and friends affected by Alzheimer's. Whenever I pray for an Alzheimer's patient, I always think of the movie and novel, The Exorcist. The reason I recall The Exorcist is the reason I go on to pray for the family of the Alzheimer's patient.

Before there was a formalized learning of the faith through the Archdiocese's RCIA program, there was Emmaus. Before Emmaus, there was C.S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton. Somewhere in my conga line of attractors to the Faith stands Father Merrin and Father Karras. Actually, they really represent one person, novelist William Peter Blatty. Merrin and Karras are two of his characters in The Exorcist.

I was impacted by seeing the movie when I was 13 and I know I read the paperback novel about a year or two later. This part of the book always has stayed with me and is the reason The Exorcist and Alzheimer's share a hyper-link in my brain.

Karras spoke again. "We say the demon ... cannot touch the victim's will."

[Merrin] "Yes, that is so ... that is so.... There is no sin."

"Then what would be the purpose of possession?" Karras said frowning. "What's the point."

"Who can know?" answered Merrin. "Who can really hope to know?" He thought for a moment. And then probingly continued: "Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us ... the observers ... every person in this house. And I think--I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love, of accepting the possibility that God could love us...."

Again Merrin paused. He continued more slowly and with a hush of introspection: "He knows ... the demon knows where to strike...." He was nodding. "Long ago I despaired of ever loving my neighbor. Certain people ... repelled me. How could I love them? I thought. It tormented me, Damien; it led me to despair of myself ... and from that, very soon, to despair of my God. My faith was shattered...."

Karras looked up at Merrin with interest. "And what happened?" he asked.

"Ah well ... at last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion at all. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other." He shook his head. "I know that all this must seem very obvious Damien. I know. But at the time I could not see it. Strange blindness. How many husbands and wives," he uttered sadly, "must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds! Ah, dear God!" He shook his head; and then nodded. There it lies I think Damien ... possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very seldom in extraordinary interventions such as here ... this girl ... this poor child. No I see it most often in little things Damien: in the senseless petty spites; the misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Enough of these," Merrin whispered, "and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves ... for ourselves...."

Does a great insight get marginalized because it came as part of a package which is remembered for much less subtle plot twists, i.e., a teenager's twisting neck. Yes, but in matters of the faith, all setbacks are merely temporary. You now know that whatever else Blatty wrote, he managed to deliver a compelling Christian message worthy of C.S. Lewis on a good day.

The text of Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's announcement is copied in full at end of post.

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In this letter to the American People, Reagan announces his Alzheimer's diagnosis - Nov. 5, 1994

My Fellow Americans,

I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.

Upon learning this news, Nancy and I had to decide whether as private citizens we would keep this a private matter or whether we would make this news known in a public way.

In the past Nancy suffered from breast cancer and I had my cancer surgeries. We found through our open disclosures we were able to raise public awareness. We were happy that as a result many more people underwent testing.

They were treated in early stages and able to return to normal, healthy lives.

So now, we feel it is important to share it with you. In opening our hearts, we hope this might promote greater awareness of this condition. Perhaps it will encourage a clearer understanding of the individuals and families who are affected by it.

At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done. I will continue to share life's journey with my beloved Nancy and my family. I plan to enjoy the great outdoors and stay in touch with my friends and supporters.

Unfortunately, as Alzheimer's Disease progresses, the family often bears a heavy burden. I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. When the time comes I am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage.

In closing let me thank you, the American people for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your President. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.

Sincerely,

Ronald Reagan
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Obama Named NBA Rookie of the Year

In a surprise announcement, President Barack Obama was named the NBA rookie of the year for the upcoming 2009-2010 NBA season. While Obama is not officially on any NBA rooster, the vote comes after some spirited pickup games at the White House yesterday, which left all observers in awe. NBA Commissioner David Stern conceded that the selection might be viewed as controversial in some circles, but he urged all Americans to 'reject the politics of hate and disbelief.'

The person expected to have competed for the Rookie award, the overall first pick in the draft Blake Griffin, immediately called to congratulate Obama. Asked to comment whether he was disappointed, Griffin stated that 'while he always dreamed of being the first bi-racial player to win the award, he understood the importance of all of humanity lining up behind Obama, whatever that may entail.' Griffin further disclosed that he had only agreed to sign with the woeful Clippers after Obama had called and asked him to do so for the sake of the multiplier effects his personal spending could have on the economy.'

Rounding out the trinity of surprise announcements today, first-year grad student Quintus Pfuffnick won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

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Presidential Query: Who Moved My Gonads?

Charles Krauthammer does a great job of exposing the cynicism behind those who opposed war efforts in Iraq, but claimed that Afghanistan was where the US should be focused. Now in power, their gonads have retreated so far and so fast, they threaten to displace some ribs. The timeline:

• In 2004 Presidential campaign, Kerry spoke of Afghanistan as the right war.
• In 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama spoke of the need to expand the Afghanistan war.
• March 27, 2009 - After a "careful policy review," President Obama announced a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• August 17, 2009 - President Obama declared Afghanistan to be "a war of necessity."
• August 31, 2009 - General McChrystal, Obama's handpicked commander, requests more troops.
• Since August 31, 2009 - POTUS gonads unaccounted for. No stimulus reward offered to date.

Krauthammer's summary:

The irony is that no one knows more about this kind of warfare than Gen. McChrystal. He was in charge of exactly this kind of "counterterrorism" in Iraq for nearly five years, killing thousands of bad guys in hugely successful under-the-radar operations.

When the world's expert on this type of counterterrorism warfare recommends precisely the opposite strategy -- "counterinsurgency," meaning a heavy-footprint, population-protecting troop surge -- you have the most convincing of cases against counterterrorism by the man who most knows its potential and its limits. And McChrystal was emphatic in his recommendation: To go any other way than counterinsurgency would lose the war.

Yet his commander in chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes. His domestic advisers, led by Rahm Emanuel, tell him if he goes for victory, he'll become LBJ, the domestic visionary destroyed by a foreign war. His vice president holds out the chimera of painless counterterrorism success.

Against Emanuel and Biden stand David Petraeus, the world's foremost expert on counterinsurgency (he saved Iraq with it), and Stanley McChrystal, the world's foremost expert on counterterrorism. Whose recommendation on how to fight would you rely on?

Less than two months ago -- Aug. 17 in front of an audience of veterans -- the president declared Afghanistan to be "a war of necessity." Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause?

Krauthammer article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Young Hamlet's Agony by Charles Krauthammer
October 9, 2009

WASHINGTON -- The genius of democracy is the rotation of power, which forces the opposition to be serious -- particularly about things like war, about which until Jan. 20 of this year Democrats were decidedly unserious.

When the Iraq War (which a majority of Senate Democrats voted for) ran into trouble and casualties began to mount, Democrats followed the shifting winds of public opinion and turned decidedly anti-war. But needing political cover because of their post-Vietnam reputation for weakness on national defense, they adopted Afghanistan as their pet war.

"I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign, which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as 'the right war' to conventional Democratic wisdom," wrote Democratic consultant Bob Shrum shortly after President Obama was elected. "This was accurate as criticism of the Bush administration, but it was also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy."

Which is a clever way to say that championing victory in Afghanistan was a contrived and disingenuous policy in which Democrats never seriously believed, a convenient two-by-four with which to bash George Bush over Iraq -- while still appearing warlike enough to fend off the soft-on-defense stereotype.

Brilliantly crafted and perfectly cynical, the "Iraq War bad, Afghan War good" posture worked. Democrats first won Congress, then the White House. But now, unfortunately, they must govern. No more games. No more pretense.

So what does their commander in chief do now with the war he once declared had to be won but had been almost criminally under-resourced by Bush?

Perhaps provide the resources to win it?

You would think so. And that's exactly what Obama's handpicked commander requested on Aug. 30 -- a surge of 30,000 to 40,000 troops to stabilize a downward spiral and save Afghanistan the way a similar surge saved Iraq.

That was more than five weeks ago. Still no response. Obama agonizes publicly as the world watches. Why? Because, explains national security adviser James Jones, you don't commit troops before you decide on a strategy.

No strategy? On March 27, flanked by his secretaries of defense and state, the president said this: "Today I'm announcing a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." He then outlined a civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.

And to emphasize his seriousness, the president made clear that he had not arrived casually at this decision. The new strategy, he declared, "marks the conclusion of a careful policy review."

Conclusion, mind you. Not the beginning. Not a process. The conclusion of an extensive review, the president assured the nation, that included consultation with military commanders and diplomats, with the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan, with our NATO allies and members of Congress.

The general in charge was then relieved and replaced with Obama's own choice, Stanley McChrystal. And it's McChrystal who submitted the request for the 40,000 troops, a request upon which the commander in chief promptly gagged.

The White House began leaking an alternate strategy, apparently proposed (invented?) by Vice President Biden, for achieving immaculate victory with arm's-length use of cruise missiles, predator drones and special ops.

The irony is that no one knows more about this kind of warfare than Gen. McChrystal. He was in charge of exactly this kind of "counterterrorism" in Iraq for nearly five years, killing thousands of bad guys in hugely successful under-the-radar operations.

When the world's expert on this type of counterterrorism warfare recommends precisely the opposite strategy -- "counterinsurgency," meaning a heavy-footprint, population-protecting troop surge -- you have the most convincing of cases against counterterrorism by the man who most knows its potential and its limits. And McChrystal was emphatic in his recommendation: To go any other way than counterinsurgency would lose the war.

Yet his commander in chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes. His domestic advisers, led by Rahm Emanuel, tell him if he goes for victory, he'll become LBJ, the domestic visionary destroyed by a foreign war. His vice president holds out the chimera of painless counterterrorism success.

Against Emanuel and Biden stand David Petraeus, the world's foremost expert on counterinsurgency (he saved Iraq with it), and Stanley McChrystal, the world's foremost expert on counterterrorism. Whose recommendation on how to fight would you rely on?

Less than two months ago -- Aug. 17 in front of an audience of veterans -- the president declared Afghanistan to be "a war of necessity." Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause?

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Copyright 2009, Washington Post Writers Group
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/09/young_hamlets_agony_98640.html at October 09, 2009 - 09:00:44 AM CDT
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WSJ Editorial Page: The Real Conservative Agenda

WSJ Editorial page mission statement:

We speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.

Whenever you hear people attempt to claim that the conservative movement is being lead by people like Limbaugh, Hannity or Beck, listen closely to see if they ever mention the Wall Street Journal Editorial page. If they don't, you now know they are on a glib attack mission, i.e. not making a serious argument.

Entertainers on the left or right attacking each other can be fun and sometimes informative [I myself am a former Hardball viewer and now a loyal Fox News viewer], but it should not be mistaken for serious thought. Serious analysis, with just the right amount of blood-lust humor, is what goes on in the glorious WSJ Editorial pages.

Today's WSJ editorial on the US's Afghanistan policy, Obama and the General, is a case in point, the first sentence:

Democrats have found someone worth fighting in Afghanistan. His name is Stan McChrystal.

Later in that editorial:

In an interview with Newsweek, Gen. McChrystal said he wouldn't resign if the President rejects his request for more troops. If he were really trying to dictate policy, he'd have given a different answer. But we don't think Gen. McChrystal should stay to implement a Biden war plan either. No commander in uniform should ask his soldiers to die for a strategy he doesn't think is winnable—or for a President who lets his advisers and party blame a general for their own lack of political nerve.

Here is what they had to say about Chicago's failed efforts to get the Olympics:

We also won't join those who pounded President Obama for taking a day to travel to Copenhagen to underscore Chicago's bid, claiming he had somehow shirked the pressing issues of health care and yesterday's dismal September jobs report. If the country is going to unravel because a President is not in Washington for 24 hours, we're in worse shape than we thought. Some also fault Mr. Obama for investing the prestige of his office in getting the games, as no President has before, but then Mr. Obama is more closely identified with Chicago than other Presidents have been with other bidding cities.

If Mr. Obama and the White House made a mistake, it was in their apparently boundless faith that somehow Mr. Obama's personal popularity would carry the day. As if, merely by seeing the rock star in person, the delegate from, say, Egypt would abandon his simmering dislike for America, forget all the dinners and deals cut with the Rio Committee, and reward Chicago. In that sense, the Olympic defeat is a relatively painless reminder that interests trump charm or likability in world affairs. Better to relearn this lesson in a fight over a sporting event than over nuclear missiles.

Today's WSJ editorial referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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OCTOBER 7, 2009
Obama and the General - The White House finds a four-star scapegoat for its Afghan jitters

Democrats have found someone worth fighting in Afghanistan. His name is Stan McChrystal.

The other night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went after the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, "with all due respect," for supposedly disrespecting the chain of command. Around the Congressional Democratic Caucus, we're told Members refer to General McChrystal as "General MacArthur," after the commander in Korea sacked by Harry Truman.

President Obama and General McChrystal

White House aides have fanned these flames with recent leaks to the media that "officials are challenging" his assessment asking for more troops. In the last two days, the White House National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense have both suggested that the general should keep his mouth shut. President Obama called him in Friday for a talking-to on the tarmac at Copenhagen airport.

Though a decorated Army four-star officer, the General's introduction to Beltway warfare is proving to be brutal. To be fair, Gen. McChrystal couldn't know that his Commander in Chief would go wobbly so soon on his commitment to him as well as to his own Afghan strategy when he was tapped for the job in April. We're told by people who know him that Gen. McChrystal "feels terrible" and "had no intention whatsoever of trying to lobby and influence" the Administration. His sense of bewilderment makes perfect sense anywhere but in the political battlefield of Washington. He was, after all, following orders.
***

Recall that in March Mr. Obama unveiled his "comprehensive new strategy . . . to reverse the Taliban's gains and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government." The Commander in Chief pledged to properly resource this "war of necessity," which he also called during the 2008 campaign "the central front on terror." The President then sacked his war commander, who had been chosen by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in favor of Gen. McChrystal, an expert in counterinsurgency.

Upon arriving in June, Gen. McChrystal launched his assessment of the forces required to execute the Obama strategy. His confidential study was completed in August and sent to the Pentagon. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Michael Mullen told Congress that more troops would be needed, and a figure of 30,000-40,000 was bandied about.

The figure has clearly spooked the Administration. Soon after, Gen. McChrystal's confidential report was leaked to the Washington Post by, well, you'll have to ask Bob Woodward. The report said that the U.S. urgently needs to reverse a "deteriorating" security situation. Soon the full retreat began in Washington, led by a vocal group within the Administration that wants to scale back the mission. The White House told the Pentagon to hold off asking for troops and Gen. McChrystal not to testify to Congress. Remarkably, President Obama mused on the Sunday talks shows, "Are we doing the right thing?"

Then Gen. McChrystal gave a speech last Thursday before the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. It was scheduled and approved by the Pentagon weeks before the Afghan political jitters seized official Washington. The General was hardly incendiary.

"We need to reverse the current trends, and time does matter," he said. Asked vaguely about taking a narrower approach that leaves Afghanistan to its own devices and strikes at terrorists from afar, Gen. McChrystal offered that "a strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted one." He warned the country would descend into "Chaos-istan."

What really worries Democrats is the prospect of Midterm-istan if Mr. Obama escalates the war. But some thought to play up the General's innocuous comment into an attempt to torpedo the latest Administration rethink.

In fact, the White House is merely revisiting the idea rejected in its "careful policy review" last spring to move from ambitious counterinsurgency to "counterterrorism" that would involve fewer troops and target al Qaeda instead of the Taliban. Vice President Joe Biden champions the change, and Sen. John Kerry and Speaker Pelosi have endorsed it.

The Biden faction says changes in the region justify a U-turn: An expanded U.S. force would merely be fighting a motley group of insurgents who aren't planning the next 9/11. This is partly true, but the links between the Taliban and al Qaeda are longstanding, particularly in the Pashtun areas of the south. If America pulls back and lets Mullah Omar create a Talibanistan in Helmand and Kandahar, al Qaeda operatives will soon follow.

As we've learned the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan, successful counterterrorism requires intelligence. This comes from earning the trust of the people, which in turn can only happen if they are protected. The Biden approach would pull U.S. soldiers back behind high walls, far from the field of battle, and turns security over to the Afghan army and police before they are prepared for the job.

The sudden Afghan rethink also jeopardizes progress in Pakistan, the world's leading sanctuary for al Qaeda. The Pakistani willingness to expand American drone strikes and launch a military campaign in their tribal regions dates squarely to the Administration's recommitment to the region. Now that Mr. Obama is having second thoughts, so might the Pakistanis.

The President's very public waver is already doing strategic harm. The Taliban are getting a morale boost and claiming victory, while our allies in Europe have one more reason to rethink their own deployments. Such a victory, as the head of the British army Sir David Richards warned on Sunday, would have an "intoxicating effect" on extremist Islam around the world.

Commanders in Chief can change their minds. George W. Bush waited too long to embrace the "surge." He had private doubts when the casualties also surged in 2007, but he gave the new approach a chance to succeed. Mr. Obama is blinking even before all the additional troops he ordered to Afghanistan have had time to deploy to the theater.

Gen. McChrystal's liberal critics also have very short memories. In 2003, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki clashed with his superiors by saying many more troops were needed to pacify Iraq. He became a Democratic hero and is now Mr. Obama's Veterans Secretary. In this case, Gen. McChrystal has become a political target merely for taking at face value Mr. Obama's order to fight the war properly. His superiors, the Central Commander David Petraeus and Adm. Mullen, back him, but can hardly be said to question civil control of the military.

In an interview with Newsweek, Gen. McChrystal said he wouldn't resign if the President rejects his request for more troops. If he were really trying to dictate policy, he'd have given a different answer. But we don't think Gen. McChrystal should stay to implement a Biden war plan either. No commander in uniform should ask his soldiers to die for a strategy he doesn't think is winnable—or for a President who lets his advisers and party blame a general for their own lack of political nerve.
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Government To Expand Permanent Underclass

As government prepares to complete it's takeover of medicine, the Taxman -- which it has successfully kept hidden in the basement, drugged, with the windows covered in newspapers and the boom-box going full blast -- can be hidden no longer. Details of how the government plans to subsidize the mother of all entitlements are finally coming out. They have avoided the details to date for good reason.

Greg Mankiw highlights the views of health care expert James Capretta - who notes the following:

As incomes rise, however, the Baucus bill cuts the value of the entitlement. A family with an income at twice the poverty line, or $48,000 in 2016, would get $9,072 in federal assistance for coverage — still a substantial sum. But it’s $7,400 less than the family would get if they earned half as much. The Baucus plan thus imposes an implicit marginal tax rate of about 30 percent ($7,400/$24,000) on wages earned by families in this income range.

And that would come on top of the high implicit taxes already built into current law. Low-wage families with children also get the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC boosts incomes for those with the very lowest wages, but it is also phased-out as incomes rise. Past a certain threshold (about $21,400 in 2016), the EITC is reduced by $0.21 for every additional $1 earned. Throw in the individual income tax rate (15 percent) and payroll taxes (7.65 percent), and the effective, implicit tax rate for workers between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line would quickly approach 70 percent — not even counting food stamps and housing vouchers.

In plain English, high marginal tax rates mean that there is little incentive for people at or near poverty levels to report higher incomes in future years, because most of it will be offset by losing various entitlements which they no longer would qualify for. If the government was trying to create a permanent underclass, I'm not sure how this structure of incentives would differ.

Below is my effort to quantify part of Mr. Capretta's example:

Please click on image to enlarge or print


Blog post referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - A 70 Percent Tax on Work

President Obama said Monday that the debate on health care has gone on long enough, and now is the time to pass something.

But does Congress, let alone the public, really understand what these bills would mean for the health sector and the wider U.S. economy? In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a lengthy assessment of the Clinton administration’s proposal, covering everything from its distributional consequences to the budgetary treatment of its various moving parts. The public should get the same kind of thorough review of what Obamacare would mean before Congress takes any further steps toward passage.

For instance, there hasn’t yet been a thorough analysis of what the bills moving in the House and Senate would mean for work incentives among low-wage families. A cursory review indicates that Obamacare would impose a massive new implicit tax on low-wage households, effectively penalizing the family that tries to do the right thing by working their way into the middle class.

According to CBO, family coverage in 2016 is likely to cost about $14,400 under the so-called “silver option” in the health-care reform plan sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. In the Baucus plan, a family of four at the poverty line (about $24,000 in 2016) would have pay to about $1,400 toward coverage, with the federal government paying the other $13,000 on their behalf. In addition, the government would also provide $3,500 to reduce the family’s deductible and co-payment costs for health services. Thus, the new entitlement provided by the Baucus bill would be worth a whopping $16,500 for a family at the poverty line.

As incomes rise, however, the Baucus bill cuts the value of the entitlement. A family with an income at twice the poverty line, or $48,000 in 2016, would get $9,072 in federal assistance for coverage — still a substantial sum. But it’s $7,400 less than the family would get if they earned half as much. The Baucus plan thus imposes an implicit marginal tax rate of about 30 percent ($7,400/$24,000) on wages earned by families in this income range.

And that would come on top of the high implicit taxes already built into current law. Low-wage families with children also get the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC boosts incomes for those with the very lowest wages, but it is also phased-out as incomes rise. Past a certain threshold (about $21,400 in 2016), the EITC is reduced by $0.21 for every additional $1 earned. Throw in the individual income tax rate (15 percent) and payroll taxes (7.65 percent), and the effective, implicit tax rate for workers between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line would quickly approach 70 percent — not even counting food stamps and housing vouchers.

The more Obamacare is rushed through Congress, the more likely it is to produce highly regrettable unintended consequences. Surely even the Democrats in Congress can see how damaging it would be to send signals to low-wage breadwinners that it no longer makes sense to seek a higher-paying job.

posted by James C. Capretta
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The Arrogance of the Florida Marlins Ownership

This morning I was in my car early heading to work at 6am. I was looking forward to at some point today blogging about what a great season the Marlins had. I was very surprised to hear from Joe Rose, on the air at WQAM, that Marlins ownership, New Yorkers Jeffrey Loria and his former son-in-law, David Samson, were preparing to fire manager Fredi Gonzalez. Going online I learned from Juan Rodriguez's Marlins blog that they already have his replacement, Bobby Valentine, having leaked their interest to ESPN and SI over the weekend.

Loria is of course free to hire whomever he prefers. What Marlins ownership can't do is tell us that Gonzalez will be fired because the team under-performed, because that claim is absurd on its face. So far, Larry Beinfest does not appear to be joining in with the company line, given that when he was asked by Rodriguez why the team had missed the playoffs, he responded that 'the main reason was the inconsistency from the starting pitching.' That will ring as true to anyone who has followed the Marlins -- three-fifths of the Marlins' season-opening rotation spent time in the minors because of non-performance -- as the 'under-performing' smear rings false.

The reason Gonzalez will be fired is that Loria prefers Valentine [or whomever] to Gonzalez. Again, it's his prerogative. The reason this firing will intensify the dislike of Loria and Samson is the lack of integrity with which they seem to operate. Saying that Gonzalez is being replaced because the Marlins didn't make the playoffs is too obvious a lie.

But this is not just another managerial firing, i.e. this is not Jeff Torborg or Joe Girardi. The Marlins are in the processing of relocating their franchise from the Dade-Broward County line to Little Havana. Gonzalez is Hispanic, with a Cuban-American background. Miami-Dade County in general, Miami specifically and Little Havana microscopically, in case some New Yorkers may not have noticed, has a ton of Hispanics [not as many as New York, but a lot]. Those facts don't mean that Gonzalez can't be fired. They do mean that Gonzalez can't be fired for a stated reason which is a lie, without building resentment against the franchise.

By telling such overt and dismissive lies, Loria and Samson are in effect spitting into the face of the community they are supposed to become a part of. A community which recently agreed to partner up with MLB and the Marlins to build a stadium. Gee, it's almost as if they don't care about their customers?

Noted.

Which brings me to the following article by Thomas Boswell, a respected sportswriter with the Washington Post. Boswell's article is about the Washington Nationals finances and a key source is the Forbes Magazine reporting about MLB finances.

Below is the financial statement I have developed about the finances of the Florida Marlins. The numbers are based on, and exactly tied into, the Forbes reporting, with specific line items confirmed independently. The Florida Marlins operating profits for 2006 through 2008 were $43 million, $36 million and $44 million. For 2009, their operating profit will likely be in the mid-$30's.

I have blogged extensively about the Marlins finances here on this blog. If you were outraged at the phony reasons Marlins ownership has given to explain why they wish to fire Gonzalez, now you know how I've felt listening to them deny their profitability.

Click on the image to print or enlarge


Thomas Boswell's article referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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A D.C. Game of Moneyball

By Thomas Boswell
Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Nats' final home game of the year Wednesday combined all the paradoxical and troubling threads of a season in which the team had the game's worst record and saw attendance drop 22 percent. Yet these same Nats, who will certainly receive revenue-sharing funds from other clubs this winter, operate on such a low budget and possess such a healthy bottom line that they are the financial envy of most other franchises.

The combination of Nats potential, both as a team and a market, has stood in contrast all year to the team's deluge of 103 losses. All that was illustrated, to an almost ludicrously degree, by a Justin Maxwell walk-off grand slam to sweep the Mets before 23,944. That two-out, full-count blast in the ninth off New York reliever Francisco Rodriguez brought cheers but also a hard question. Why are such moments, which make addiction to baseball go viral in any town, so rare here?

As Washington's obvious promise has been thwarted by its gruesome won-lost reality, resentment toward the way the Nats do business, already prevalent in Washington, is now spreading through the game. This offseason may be the juncture at which both local fans, as well as executives throughout the game, decide if the Lerners are responsible baseball citizens.

The Nats, who clinched the game's worst record on Wednesday thanks to a Pirates win, are on the verge of becoming a lightning rod of criticism, especially by big-market teams that pay into the game's huge revenue-sharing pot, according to numerous baseball sources contacted over the last three months.

"You're probably going to see revenue-sharing reform pretty soon," an American League executive said. "It's usually small-market teams like Pittsburgh that are the issue."

The Pirates, who have fielded 17 straight losing teams yet concede they have made a profit in each of the past six seasons, exemplify the business model: keep the payroll tiny, lose a ton of games every year, yet turn a profit thanks to revenue sharing and then claim it's the only way to survive in a tiny market.

But the Bucs have an excuse: Their metropolitan market -- like Denver, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City and Milwaukee -- is less than half Washington's size (No. 9 in the United States).

If the Nats keep operating as they have, they'll be seen as the only top-10 market with the gall to act like a bottom-five town.

When Major League Baseball ran the Nats, the Lerners inherited a 2006 payroll of $63 million that many considered skimpy after the Nats averaged 33,000 fans in '05. Yet the Lerners cut that budget immediately to $37 million and have not returned to $63 million. One consequence is that Forbes magazine ranked the Nationals the second-most profitable team in baseball in '08.

Even with the recent contracts to Adam Dunn, Ryan Zimmerman and Stephen Strasburg, the Nats' payroll will still plummet from $61 million this year to $40 million in current '10 obligations, close to dead last in baseball.

The Nats' position: We won't tell you anything about our finances, but just wait 'til next year.

"We are tremendously excited. The next big step is right there to be taken," said President Stan Kasten, who speaks for the team. "This is not a great year if you want a [free agent like CC] Sabathia or Mark Teixeira. But the players who are available are just what we need: a veteran starter in the rotation, two more arms in the bullpen and a middle infielder who helps our defense.

"We can do those things. We just have to do those things."

Actually, the Nats could afford to do all this and more. The bullpen arms they talk about don't include a costly closer. Add an $8-million-a-year right fielder if you want, too. (They won't.)

The paradox of the Nats was apparent in their final homestand. In nine games, at which you might expect empty stands, the Nats averaged 22,990 fans vs. their average of 22,719. Same old story: Some of us were the incorrigible core; some came to see a popular foe (Dodgers); and 85,174 arrived last weekend just because the weather was nice and, well, it was the last baseball this year.

Baseball awarded the Lerners such a popular core American product, still relatively affordable, and the District built them such a pretty new ballpark, that they can't keep people away. Attendance ranked above six teams, and if the average had been just 1,000 higher (as it might be once Strasburg arrives), the Nats would have been ahead of 10 teams. Factor in the Nats' big-market ticket prices, and they stand right in the middle of baseball in gate receipts.

To see how well the Nats are doing, even though the Lerners' public position is that they will "take no money out of the team" in the first 10 years, compare them to the Pirates: Since the Lerners took over, the Nats have outdrawn the Pirates by 1.4 million fans and, at higher ticket prices, produced about $100 million more in gate revenues. The Nats' local TV revenue (about $24 million a year) is also far higher.

On the other hand, the Lerners paid far more for the Nats, and borrowed more money, a debt that must be serviced.

The Nats provide no information on how they define "taking no money out of the team," except Ted Lerner's comments to me twice that he considers debt service as a cost. Kasten adds that Forbes magazine's '08 ranking of the Nats as the second-most profitable team in baseball is "way off." How so? No detail. Sorry.

Such privacy is their corporate right, but it's hardly forthcoming from a family that presented itself as a long-term partner with the District in the civic-minded attempt to revive Southeast with baseball as an expensive core catalyst.

Kasten assures me I can't possibly grasp the Nats' high finance. He even threw up his hands in exasperation, a new touch.

"That shows how much you don't know," Kasten said.

Here's one theory: After speaking with executives of other teams about their borrowing structures, one approach is to secure highly leveraged term loans with revolving lines of credit and then to amortize principal in the manner of a mortgage; that way, owners can claim to take little or no money out of the teams while still building their equity (and thus their own net worth).

Unlike the tiny-town teams, the Nats are a franchise with a defining choice to make. But it won't be psychologically easy. Teams such as the Padres have argued that, unless you are one of the sport's traditional "haves," it's not a winning business proposition to add tens of millions to payroll to build a better team. Ironically, the way the game is structured, it's safer and easier to be a lousy cheap club, but be ensured a decent buck.

Kasten vows that the Nats still have the same big-market dreams they proclaimed three years ago when the Lerners brought a team back to their home town, claiming they would build a franchise worthy of "the most important city in the world." The Dunn, Zimmerman and Strasburg deals are merely first tastes. Just wait -- but not long. That's their pitch.

No Washington team has lost more than 106 games since 1909 -- 100 years ago. The Nats could still reach 107 this weekend.

If the Lerners keep their promises, that is an opportunity that should never, ever come again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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What Sildenafil Has JoinedLet No Natural Disease Put Asunder

It would be hard to describe how much I enjoyed this story.

This from a statement by the Brazilian National Social Security Institute (INSS):

"The social security system was planned so that the wife receives her husband's pension for only 15 years or so. With growing life expectancy and remarriages with much younger women, benefits today stretch out over 35 years," the author of the study, Paulo Tafner, explained to AFP.

"This is a grave and serious challenge for the future of the country, and it's going to require a reform of the pension system," Tafner said.

He said the younger-wife phenomenon was commonly called the "Viagra effect."

A Country Filled With Desperate Housewives?

The pension issue is just one of the unnatural consequences of those unions. Consider what might happen if the males start living significantly longer. Fast forward to the summer of the year 2015 in and about Rio and consider the following mix of facts and speculation:

• Millions of women in good health are married to much older men with seriously declining overall health, but whose deaths are not imminent thanks to the continuing advances in medicine's ability to forestall death.
• Those same women see and read daily about the expected influx of wealthy tourists and athletes which are obviously expected to inundate the region during the summer Olympic games.

If I'm a Brazilian male of 60+ years married to someone who ... how to say this tactfully ... someone whom I would not even have been allowed [without being ridiculed or beaten] to look at, dating back to when early Biopeds first started doodling on walls in the Fertile Crescent -- I would not be sleeping well, and not just because I'm peeing every two hours.

I tell you it's like walking around with with the message "kill me" written on the tennis ball cushions of your walker. Combine that with the fact that the Brazilian airwaves were filled with American TV show episodes of The Closer, CSI and Law & Order, providing my once-adoring cookie weekly how-to-murder-without-getting-caught-seminars. Brazil might be on the verge of a Murderous Cookie/Trophy Wife Revolt.

Talk about a chemical imbalance. Appreciate the fact that the union which the chemical Sildenafil makes plausible from the male's perspective, the chemicals Niacin and Atorvastatin threaten to make literally interminable from the female perspective.

Article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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'Viagra effect' undermining Brazil's pension system - AFP) – Aug 18, 2009

RIO DE JANEIRO — The widespread tendency in Brazil for men to remarry women several decades younger -- called the "Viagra effect" -- is undermining the country's pension system, researchers warned Tuesday.

The report, by Brazil's National Social Security Institute (INSS), showed that a trend of men in their 60s marrying women half their age was leaving a big pool of young widows collecting benefits for much longer than anticipated.

"The social security system was planned so that the wife receives her husband's pension for only 15 years or so. With growing life expectancy and remarriages with much younger women, benefits today stretch out over 35 years," the author of the study, Paulo Tafner, explained to AFP.

He said the younger-wife phenomenon was commonly called the "Viagra effect."

But he noted that in fact the trend started in the 1970s -- well before the advent of the little blue pill that has since the mid-1990s helped men carry their sex lives well into old age.

According to the INSS report, two out of three men who are separated remarry, while only one out of three separated women find a new husband.

Of the separated men, 64 percent of those aged over 50 remarry women younger than them. In the 60-64 age range, the proportion is 69 percent.

And the marked preference is for women aged 30 years younger.

Brazil has a mixed public-private pensions system.

Those in the public system receive the equivalent of their salary after retirement, while those with private funds receive a maximum of 1,800 dollars a month.

Under current laws, when a retired man dies, his wife continues to receive his full pension until her own death.

According to the INSS, 94 percent of pensions go to women.

"This is a grave and serious challenge for the future of the country, and it's going to require a reform of the pension system," Tafner said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP.
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U2: Practicing What They Preach?

Jack Woltz, prior to Khartoum losing his head

... a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous

U2 - I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight

Pity the nation that won't listen to your boys and girls
Cos the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard
Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear?
The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear
Oh, but a change of heart comes slow

Point to U2 -- with an assist to Tom Hagen and the Husqvarna Group -- lesson learned.

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Letter mailed on October 7th
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U2 - Attn Larry Mullen, Jr.
Principle Management
250 West 57th Street
Suite 2120
New York, NY 10107
USA

October 7th, 2009

Dear Mr Mullen, Jr.

I turned 50 earlier this year and put off having a party to mark the occasion until I lost 30 pounds or thought of a good idea to justify the party. Gratefully, the idea came quicker than the weight loss, which is proving problematic, but that's a whole other letter.

I would appreciate it if your band would come and play at my birthday party. When I say 'your band,' I'm not down on any of the others, but hey, it was your idea, your ad and y'all met at your house, please.... So in a sense, the only thing pro-bono about this request would be your fees [joke].

I have tentatively selected the date of March 18th, 2010. It's the Thursday right before Spring Break [I wanted to make sure my kids could make it] and thankfully coincides with a fairly limited NHL and NBA schedule for that night. I checked and your band doesn't have a concert that date, so hopefully there won't be conflicts at your end. But I know these things can change [I have a cousin who once dated a roadie].

We would be incredibly grateful and appreciative if your band could make it. Of course, there would be no restrictions on what you chose to play. But if, and truly only if no one if offended, please stay away from the Zooropa period material.

God Bless

Jorge Costales

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