Weekend Tids and Bits

BIPARTISAN BONE-HEADEDNESS was on display this week when the Obama administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided American Apparel in Los Angeles, threatening the jobs of 1,800 workers whose documentation didn’t square with federal records. The Bush administration liked to do these things with guns and dogs, but the bone- headedness is truly bipartisan. Here is the largest clothing manufacturer in Los Angeles, one of the few remaining in America, one that pays its workers $10-$12 hourly with health benefits and trains them. So let’s ignore dangerous sweatshops here and overseas and raid these guys, right? As The New York Times editorialized, “A crackdown that forces 1,800 taxpaying would-be Americans into joblessness in a dismal economy is a law-enforcement victory only in the bitterest, narrowest sense. As a solution to the problem of unauthorized workers — 1,800 down, millions to go — it’s ludicrous.”

---

NOT THEIR KIND OF TOWN, CHICAGO IS – at least to the International Olympic Committee which shot down Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games despite personal pleas from President and Mrs. Obama. Word is Chicago was the first to go because of doubts raised by Pakistan and similar countries over their citizens getting extra scrutiny to make certain their visit was to see the Olympic torch, not torch the Olympics. Rio, where the homicide rate in 2006 was was 37.7 per 100,000, citizens got the IOC nod. Chicago’s homicide rate in 2007 was 16.

---

STIFFS GETTING STIFFED is the problem in Detroit where CNN reports 67 of the dearly departed are in a freezer because neither their families or the county can afford to bury them. If budget money is found in 2010, burials will be on a first-in/first-interred basis, suggesting the first burial will be Detroit’s Sense of Decency.

---

NEED AN INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADE? GET INVADED BY U.S. – An Associated Press report this week shows Iraq’s electricity, telephone, water and sewage services are significantly better after the U.S. invasion than before. Beats raising money from government bonds, I guess.

Last Week’s Lessons:

· Live convicts cost less than dead ones is the revelation that may finally bring arguments against the death penalty to a level elected officials can understand at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/death-penalty-debate-dead-certain-at.html

· Please go find a car back seat is the message to students at Tufts University, who are enjoined from having dorm sex in front of their roomies at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/birds-bees-and-tufts-university-birds.html

· It is because we say it is and it’s also a banner year for Chimera Research, the shadowy company the government and media use to find things that aren’t there and didn’t happen at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/10/big-year-for-chimera-research-head-of.html

Have a great weekend!

###

Big Year For Chimera Research

The head of the shadowy organization used by both the federal government and mainstream media to promote things that aren’t there says business is booming and partners can expect a record year.

William O.T. Wisp, CEO of Chimera Research, says the company that only lists “somewhere” as an address in IRS filings looks on the first three quarters of 2009 with pride and not incidentally profit.

Asked to highlight some of the current projects, Wisp immediately turned to Iran’s nuclear bomb project. “That’s one we can put in the trophy case,” he said, adding “the same team that delivered Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction intelligence is rightfully proud of the payoffs starting to come in from their work on the Iran project.”

Told that it turned out Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that Iran may be just developing peaceful atomic energy as it claims, Wisp chided “Do your homework before interviews, Son. Confusing reality with policy is a sure sign of a beginner.”

Asked for an example, an obviously pained Wisp paused a moment before steeling himself to deal on the dense side. “Do you remember the death panels that were part of the Obama administration’s health care reform package?” he asked.

“Well, yes, but they never existed,” this reporter said to which Wisp shot back “Aha! You said you remember them! And the fact that you do remember them is testimony to how Chimera Research does its job, is it not?”

“Unless, of course,” Wisp added “you want the word to get around that you’re remembering things that never existed.”

Wisp denied allegations that the whole death panel flap was GOP-designed to allow Republicans to score home-base political points and at the same time supply a national media addicted to conflict. “That’s just too simple, Son ,” he said, explaining that the Democrats had actually funded Chimera’s work on death panels, knowing Republicans would embrace them and the media would drool at the Pavlovian conflict bell.

Asked if the media itself, caught in the throes of plummeting advertising revenues and declining subscribers, might not be around much longer, Wisp laughed and said “that’s another one of our better efforts.”

He explained that the Chimera campaign on disintegrating mainstream media had resulted in talk of a federal bailout for an industry that has seen gross profit margins of 20 percent or more plummet to the low teens or even high single digits, “stuff that many another company would be right proud to take home to Mama, let me tell you.”

Wisp declined to put numbers on Wisp’s performance, explaining that as a privately held company there was no requirement to do so, “but you can certainly think what we want you to think – that’s the Chimera way.”

###

Birds, Bees and Tufts University

Birds do it, bees do it, even students at Tufts University do it, but they’d better not do it in front of their roommates.

Students living in university housing have been advised by Tufts University Residential Life and Learning that “You may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room. Any sexual activity within your assigned room should not ever deprive your roommate(s) of privacy, study, or sleep time.”

That suggests the once-fabled tightly laced social mores of suburban Boston have come undone, but as the school proclaims on its web site “Students look genuinely happy here, and it's not hard to understand why. “

Apparently.

The issue is not the university’s leadership discovering that a policy of allowing “guests” including significant others to visit overnight in dorm rooms might lead to mischief. It’s more one of decorum when you and your significant other are making whoopee while your roommate is trying to make the honor roll or just feeling left out.

Aging baby boomers will recall their own college experiences when a guest of the opposite sex wasn’t allowed in a shared university room unless the roommate was present in a chaperone role. The quaint notion then was that a third party was an inhibition, not the witness to an exhibition, but times have changed.

As the school’s web site says, “Until the 1960s, male freshmen were required to wear beanies on campus.” It does not address what undergraduates in 2009 should wear when they are on each other.

The site also says “College is about meeting people, after all, and living on campus is the best way to do that.” It does not include suggested protocols for meeting people who are actively engaged in making more people, apparently leaving this open to independent research.

Elders who once had to pursue their comparative personal biology projects in parked cars might understandably be worried that such ease of access might leave Tufts students with little time or energy for other studies.

The university’s website addresses that concern, declaring “A guest’s visit, whether Tufts student or not, may not exceed three (3) consecutive nights in any 7-day period from Sunday–Saturday. Students may not host overnight guests more than nine (9) nights in any 30-day period.”

Elders should also note that for university students, these are strict limits, not fond fantasies. But as Tufts says in its vision statement, “Knowledge is important but alone is not enough. Learning must be lifelong.”

So there is still hope that at some point in their lives, Tufts students will learn to rent a motel room. Maybe that’s at the graduate level.

###

Death Penalty Debate

Dead Certain At Last

Death penalty supporters and opponents have bludgeoned each other with moral certainties for decades, but at last something speaks to the core of the American soul – killing convicts costs too much.

A September 27 New York Times editorial highlighted information from the Death Penalty Information Center: Killing convicts costs the taxpayers lots more than sentencing them to life. As always, follow the money.

The money here flows into the pockets of lawyers. Seeking the death penalty and defending against it isn’t something most for-hire guardians of justice do for free, and it’s not a results-oriented effort. New Jersey, which abolished the death penalty in 2007, spent $253 million since 1982 on death penalty cases without a single execution taking place, the only innocent victims being taxpayers.

California, which punctuates its wildfires, earthquakes, mudslides and droughts with budget crises, spends $90,000 more per inmate per year on those under death sentence than on those in prison for life. So the current death-row groups hands taxpayers a yearly $60-million-plus tab and just 13 executions since 1976.

There are other examples, but the core message is that ending the death penalty on financial grounds is a magnificent opportunity for all political parties.

Republicans, who tend to be death penalty supporters, can appeal to their higher gods and campaign to Reduce Government Spending while Protecting the Innocent. Not the Innocent Unborn, exactly, but that’s a nuance best left to Republican spin doctors. If they can make Sarah Palin seem presidential material, innocent convicts ought not to be a challenge.

Democrats, who tend to be death penalty opponents, can don the mantle of Fiscal Conservatism while continuing their traditional championing of the underdog. That only strengthens their normally strong prison and cemetery vote, and appeals to the Blue Dog Democrats, aw-shucks jeans-wearing liberals who secretly wear Republican wool union suits to bed.

Independents, whose weed of indecision has become a flower of principle, can support the death penalty but oppose funding any executions.

Libertarians can continue to be amused, since they would have settled all outstanding issues by single combat long ago.

Even the Obama administration, which is looking for health care reform change in every federal couch, ought to jump on the death-penalty-too-costly bandwagon. Money not spent on killing convicts might more profitably be spent on health care for the living, but that too needs the proper political spin. Look for a White House press release headlined “Administration Denies Greedy Convicts Death Money, Shifts It To Health.”

###