The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Overreaction? Not at all

The Economist Gulliver blog makes a good case that media coverage of Irene was appropriate for the threat:

Hurricanes are serious business. They have the capacity to cause billions of dollars in damage and kill hundreds or thousands of people. They have political consequences, too—no politician wants to be blamed for a disaster the way President George W. Bush was after Hurricane Katrina. Moreover, it is very unusual for a hurricane to hit America's north-east, where around one sixth of Americans live and a quarter of the country's economic output is produced. An unusual, potentially disastrous event that was certain to affect millions of Americans and put billions of dollars of property at risk is just the sort of thing the media should be covering. Just because Irene wasn't the disaster that some Americans feared doesn't mean it wasn't important to cover it.

Another way to look at it, just because Irene didn't cause more damage doesn't mean the preparations and coverage were wrong. Just two days ago it looked like Manhattan, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Hoboken, and Jersey City—places where millions of people live just a few meters above sea level—could experience devastating damage from a storm surge. This is, remember, the first hurricane to hit New York City in about a century.

I'm very happy the storm did as little damage as it did. And even though it turned out to be unnecessary, I'm glad Mayor Bloomberg and Governors Cuomo and Christie took the actions they did to prepare for what looked like, earlier this weekend, an unprecedented disaster.

"Eavesdropper" acquitted; law still not tested

Yesterday I wrote about a criminal trial here in Chicago in which a woman was charged with felony eavesdropping for recording a conversation with two police officers. Under Illinois law, this "crime" carries the same penalties as rape and manslaughter. The law needs to go, whether through repeal (unlikely) or being overturned by a Federal appeals court (more likely).

Good news for Tiawanda Moore this afternoon, but bad news for Illinois civil liberties: she got acquitted:

[A] Criminal Court jury quickly repudiated the prosecution's case, taking less than an hour to acquit Moore on both eavesdropping counts.

"The two cops came across as intimidating and insensitive," said one juror, Ray Adams, 57, a pharmacist from the western suburbs. "Everybody thought it was just a waste of time and that (Moore) never should have been charged."

The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago last year challenging the law, saying it was unconstitutional to prevent people from openly recording police officers working in public. A federal judge dismissed the suit, but the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments next month in the ACLU's appeal of the decision.

The 7th Circuit has a reputation for evenness. We can hope, at least; but the ACLU's case will probably take another few years to finish.

As bad as murder?

Instead of writing a banal post about American Airlines' changes to their million-mile program, here's something one of my co-workers just brought to my attention. A woman is on trial in Illinois for secretly recording a conversation with a cop she alleges was trying to get her to drop a harassment case against another cop. Because the person she recorded was a police officer, however, the crime is a Class 1 felony—the same class that includes second-degree murder[1], rape[2], and carjacking[3]:

Tiawanda Moore, 20, is charged with two felony counts of eavesdropping on a public official for allegedly recording a four-minute portion of the Aug. 18, 2010, interview on her BlackBerry, which she had hidden in her lap.

Moore, of Hammond, Ind., was being interviewed at police headquarters about her complaint that a patrol officer had grabbed her breast and given her his phone number when he came to her boyfriend’s South Side apartment on a domestic disturbance call.

The American Civil Liberties Union has worked for years to get the law overturned. Their case against the Illinois States Attorney seeking to overturn the law is currently before the 7th Circuit. Updates as warranted.

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[1] i.e., unintentional homicide or manslaughter; see 720 ILCS 5/9-2(d)

[2] 720 ILCS 5/11‑1.20(b)(1)

[3] 720 ILCS 5/18-3(c)

Revelation

According to a recent study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Tea Party supporters believe in "authoritarianism, libertarianism, fear of change, and negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration:"

The study used polling of North Carolina and Tennessee, conducted by Public Policy Polling (D) in the Summer of 2010, and determined the cultural dispositions by measuring the responses of tea partiers to set questions. After PPP surveyed over 2,000 voters who were sympathetic to the Tea Party, researchers then reinterviewed almost 600 in the fall of 2010. Those interviews included everything from personality based queries like "Would you say it is more important that a child obeys his parents, or that he is responsible for his own actions?" to more political ones, like "Do you think immigrants who came into this country illegally but pay taxes and have not been arrested should be given the opportunity to become permanent legal residents?" The study also incudes interviews and short responses with ten participants at a Tea Party rally in Washington, NC.

In all seriousness, it's good that Prof. Perrin et al. got the data for this. For example, lest we confuse the Tea Party with latter-day Hamiltons and Madisons:

In our follow-up poll, 84% of those positive towards the TPM [Tea Party members] said the Constitution should be interpreted "as the Founders intended," compared to only 34% of other respondents. ... [But] support for Constitutional principles is not absolute. TPM supporters were twice as likely than others to favor a constitutional amendment banning flag burning; many also support efforts to overturn citizenship as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment.

In short: the Tea Party say they believe in the Constitution, but only the parts they like. In this way they carry on the populist, know-nothing tradition that has made America great since its founding.

Rick Perry's accomplishments

As he starts to look like the GOP's nominee next year, let's pause and consider what Rick Perry—"Governor Goodhair" to Molly Ivins not so long ago—has actually done:

So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.

For this much is true about Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.

What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.” The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.

Curse you, Krugman, and your logic! That's not what the GOP needs right now.

Origins of the Tea Party

I don't know how I missed this op-ed Tuesday:

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today

Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

The authors also point out that as more people get familiar with the Tea Party, they're more likely to loathe them. The 2012 election season should be very, very entertaining.

Samoa skipping a day

I love these odd stories about time. Samoa, a small archipelago in the South Pacific, has passed a law to shift from the UTC-11 zone to UTC+13. This shift will cause them to skip December 30th entirely:

But the bill was not passed without its doubters. Faleata East MP, Aveau Niko Palamo, suggested that instead of one day for the transition to happen, it should be two days.

“What about the people who were born on that day, the weddings and anniversaries commemorated on that day,” says the MP. “The Seventh Day Adventists go to sleep on Thursday and wake up in the middle of the Sabbath.”

As for Aveau’s concern, [Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi] says; “Research shows that no one was born or married on 30 December.”

This is not true. A call to the Samoa Statistics Bureau confirmed that there are 767 births and 43 marriages registered on 30 December.

Well, with respect to the Prime Minister, no one will be born or married this December 30th, but that was a silly thing to say.

Samoa's change moves the International Date Line to the east, but it's not as extreme as Kiribati's wrenching of the IDL two hours east to ensure that it was the first place to greet the new millennium.

Don't be cruel

I try not to chuckle at politician's gaffes. I mean, we've got Joe Biden on our side, for crying out loud. But Biden's an amateur when compared with Michele Bachmann:

"Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today," Bachmann said, kicking off a rally in Spartanburg, South Carolina, CNN reports.

"We played you a little bit of 'Promised Land' when we pulled up. You can't do better than Elvis Presley, and we thought we would celebrate his birthday as we get started celebrating taking our country back to work."

In fact, Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935. Today's date, August 16, is the anniversary of his death in 1977 at age 42, likely caused by heart disease that was seriously exacerbated from prescription drug abuse.

I also try not to make "Hound Dog" references gratuitously...

Almost too close to home

Sometimes The Onion has a satirical piece that's, well, almost completely true:

Visa Exposed As Massive Credit Card Scam

SAN FRANCISCO—In coordinated raids Monday at locations in Delaware, South Dakota, and California, federal agents apprehended dozens of executives at Visa Inc., a sham corporation accused of perpetrating the largest credit card scam in U.S. history.

According to indictments filed in U.S. District Court, Visa posed as a reputable lender, working through banks to peddle a variety of convincing-looking credit cards carefully designed to dupe consumers into spending far more money than they had. The criminal group would then impose a succession of escalating fees on unpaid balances, allegedly bilking some $300 billion from victims in the past year alone.

The article goes on to enumerate Visa's alleged wrongs. Only, most of them are true.

Chuckle, or nervous laughter?

Visa-free travel update

Since I last mentioned an annual study that reports which countries allow visa-free visitors from which other countries, the U.S. has fallen out of second place:

Scandinavians and Finns, by contrast, can travel to 173 countries or territories (out of a possible 223) without the need to fill in forms with curious questions dreamt up by bureaucrats.

The law firm Henley & Partners, which compiles the list, now has the U.S. tied at 5th with Ireland. The other top-5 countries are as follows:

RankCountriesCan visit
1Denmark, Finland, Sweden173
2Germany172
3Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, UK171
4Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain170
5Ireland, US169

When I have time, I'll try to chase down the raw data to find out, again, which countries we need visas to visit that our European and Japanese friends don't.