Low Earth Orbit

Governor Schwarzenegger? It's the media's fault!

[source, source]

Instead, we in the media let this recall train leave the station. We blamed Davis for California’s energy “crisis” two years ago (which, would you believe it?, was actually a result of Enron and other energy traders cooking the books). As apt as Davis’s first name actually is, he is not the kind of elected official for whom the recall law was written. He has not violated the public trust. He has not committed treason. He has not exhibited immoral or criminal behavior. You may think he’s doing a bad job as governor, but the standard for firing an elected official should be much higher than merely disagreeing with his approach to governing and having a right-wing Congressman in your state who has several million dollars with which to pay the so-called “volunteers” to man the recall barricades. Where was the coverage that should have called the effort what it is: a coup?

Yes, clearly the root of the problem in California is that _voters_ determine the elected officials, not Big Media. In modern journalism, it's _always_ about the journalists - everything else is just a prop.

Illinois goes nano

While I don't support government financing of research, it's still interesting to hear the Governor of Illinois talk about the "funding and commercialization of nanotech":http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/C93C90A208F91DAE86256DBC000CA9C9?OpenDocument&Headline=Illinois+signs+off+on+$82+million+in+spending+on+2+university+labs. Nanotech is definitely going mainstream.

Flood disaster in Iraq

[source, source]

A dozen years after Saddam Hussein ordered the vast marshes of southeastern Iraq drained, transforming idyllic wetlands into a barren moonscape to eliminate a hiding place for Shiite Muslim political opponents, Iraqi engineers have turned on the spigot again. The flow is not what it once was -- new dams have weakened the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers that feed the marshes -- but the impact has been profound. As the blanket of water gradually expands, it is quickly nourishing plants, animals and a way of life for Marsh Arabs that Hussein had tried so assiduously to extinguish. . . . "Everyone is so happy," Kerkush said as he watched his son stand in a mashoof and steer it like a gondolier with a long wooden pole. "We are starting to live like we used to, not the way Saddam wanted us to live."

I'm surprised that this wasn't repored as another disaster in Iraq, a massive flooding of all that land that the Ba'ath so laboriously reclaimed.

Europe's present, our future?

[source, source]

Were the federal government to account for its Social Security obligations under the rules of accrual accounting, which govern public companies, its financial outlook would be far worse. By the end of last year, the Social Security system owed retirees and current workers benefits valued at $14 trillion. The system's assets, in contrast, were only $3.5 trillion. These assets include not only the trust funds' current reserves ($1.4 trillion), but also the present value of the taxes that current workers will pay over the remainder of their working lives ($2.1 trillion). In other words, the system's current shortfall — its assets minus its liabilities — is $10.5 trillion. Unless Congress chooses to rescind Social Security benefits that have already been earned, this shortfall must be shouldered by future generations. This implicit debt of the Social Security system is more than two and a half times larger than the government's public debt. What's more, the magnitude of the Social Security shortfall grew immensely last year. At the beginning of 2002, the trust fund's deficit was $10.1 trillion. Under a system of accrual accounting, Social Security would have had to report a loss of approximately $370 billion. If this figure — and not the trust fund's annual cash-flow surplus — were added to other federal accounts, the federal government would have reported a $930 billion deficit last week. Add in similar adjustments for Medicare and other retiree benefits, and the flow of red ink last year surges even higher.

It's even worse than this, because the trust fund doesn't exist. The money's been spent.