The only conservative in Western Massachusetts - Email Eric Lindholm: ealindholm -at- msn -dot- com

 
Gas is expensive - Yow, Matt Hoy has a longer daily commute than me. I think we both hope the lawsuit against OPEC goes well.
posted by Eric at 9:20 PM (0) comments

 
Another day, another global warming debunking - Who ya gonna believe, the facts or those lyin' computer models?
posted by Eric at 9:19 PM (1) comments

 
Negotiating can backfire - Betsy's Page: "When Kennedy met Khrushchev."
posted by Eric at 8:59 PM (0) comments

 
Are they still doing that "Worst That Could Happen" song? - The Brooklyn Bridge is 125 years old.
posted by Eric at 8:48 PM (0) comments

 
Nice call - Despite the early buzz, Ann Althouse called the "American Idol" winner. I heard that they didn't announce the winner until 9:59pm EST. Great job, Fox.
posted by Eric at 8:44 PM (0) comments

 
And that's that

The Field appears to have a scoop:

The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.

You can understand Hillary's peevish tenacity: she knows that the Democratic candidate has an excellent chance to win the White House this year and why not her? The best answer is that, as George Will notes, Americans are forward-looking and all Hillary offers is nostalgia for the (Bill) Clinton years.
posted by Eric at 8:39 PM (0) comments

 
Must be "The Onion" - CBS News: "Hillary compares Florida primary to Zimbabwe."

Wow, Hillary, just wow. Here's the latest news from Mugabe-land "Zimbabwe inflation rate now over 1 million percent": "As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1 billion Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars."

One billion dollars for coffee? Starbucks is for pikers!
posted by Eric at 10:17 PM (1) comments

 
Do something - Congressman Paul Ryan is introducing broad legislation which he outlines in today's Opinion Journal: "How to Tackle the Entitlement Crisis." There's not much I disagree with except Ryan's bill is so all-encompassing that it's easy to see representatives quailing at the aggressive actions to reform entitlements. An incremental approach would be better, and more politically viable - something would be better than nothing, which is what we're likely to get until it's too late.
posted by Eric at 9:23 PM (0) comments

 
The annual public flogging - Fox News: "Oil Companies Defend Large Profits Before Senate Judiciary Committee"

Every year, I wait for the oil executives to defend themselves and say something like "I won't be spoken to like this" then storm out. Instead they just sit through the theater and try to explain Economics 101 to grandstanding senators:

"The fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work," said [Shell chief] Hofmeister. The market is squeezed by exporting nations managing demand for their own interest and other nations subsidizing prices to encourage economic growth, he said.

The percentage of oil we get from foreign sources now accounts for almost 50% of all U.S. consumption, a record level much higher than the 28% in 1973. What this means is that any disruption in supply will have a crippling effect on the U.S. economy. Having failed to learn history, we've put our future into the hands of foreigners. Of course, this wouldn't be terrible if it were the Canadians or the Brits, but it's mostly the Saudis and Hugo Chavez.

Extra - Dave in Texas saw some pushback.

More - Via Q&O, 10 questions for Senators.
posted by Eric at 8:52 PM (0) comments

 
Less is more - The Boston Globe had an article today about how people are fed up with airlines. Somewhat surprisingly, the airline with the highest marks - by far - is low-cost leader Southwest, #1 in passenger satisfaction for 15 years running.

I read in one of my operations management textbooks, in the "lean manufacturing" section, that the reason Southwest performs so well is that it uses exactly one kind of plane: the Boeing 737. By standardizing to one kind of plane, Southwest minimizes the cost of maintenance, parts, staff, and operation.
posted by Eric at 9:41 PM (6) comments

 
You can't soak the rich - Via Opinion Journal, here's Hauser's Law: "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP."
posted by Eric at 9:40 PM (0) comments

 
Senator - Boston Globe: "Senator Ted Kennedy's career in public service"
posted by Eric at 9:39 PM (0) comments

 
So much for the politics of hope

Jim Wooten on Obama's Social Security "plan," such as it is: "Obama scares the old folks"

Campaigning Sunday in Oregon, a state he should win handily on Tuesday, Obama did what Democrats have done for decades: Spooked the old folks on Social Security. He told a crowd of about 130 at an assisted living center in Gresham, Ore., that John McCain will threaten their Social Security checks. Sleazy. What a hypocrite. Takes the high-horse to complain about the politics of division and diversion and resorts to the only game Democrats running nationwide know: Scaring the daylights out of grandma and grandpa, the vulnerable, weak and confused.

Obama needs Hillary's older voting base so his general election strategy will be: whatever Grandma wants, Grandma gets.

Obama also said he would eliminate income taxes on any retiree making less than 50,000 a year. "If your income is less than $50,000 a year, I don't think you should have to pay income tax on your Social Security. This would completely eliminate income taxes for 7 million seniors across the country and provide a savings of approx $1,400 per person each year."

Well, it's about time that somebody did something for the seniors in America. The age of neglect will soon be over:

The federal government spent $952 billion in 2007 on elderly benefits, up from $601 billion in 2000. It's the biggest function of the federal government. States chipped in another $27 billion in 2007, mostly for nursing homes.

All three major senior programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - experienced dramatically escalating costs that outstripped inflation and the growth in the senior population.

Rev up that pandering machine, Obama. Grandma wants her cash!
posted by Eric at 10:20 PM (0) comments

 
Double-stuffed means double-traffic

AP: "14 tons of spilled Oreo cookies snarl Illinois traffic"

Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway. Illinois State Police Sgt. Brian Mahoney says the truck's driver was traveling from Chicago to Morris on Interstate 80 around 4 a.m. Monday when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the median.
"The boxes came out of the trailer and boxes were ripped open," he said.
The crash about 50 miles southwest of Chicago remains under investigation.

Police have released this sketch of a suspect:

posted by Eric at 7:41 PM (5) comments

 
The generational battle is forming

The Villages in Florida is now, according to this article, the world's largest gated retirement community. The complete segregation of seniors from the rest of society in this retirement Fantasyland has larger implications for America:

Q. Will the baby-boom generation reinvent retirement living?
They already are, in the sense that many such communities being built in the North are closer to cities and family, as well as within commuting distance for work. But age-segregated communities - even ones designed by developers - are still utopias, and utopias invariably fail. When people are segregated, they lose touch with their commonalities, and cooperation is replaced with strife. One of the nation's oldest age-segregated communities, Sun City in Arizona, defeated 17 school-bond measures in 12 years.... I'm left wondering how generous these schoolchildren will feel when they grow up and inherit nearly $10 trillion in national debt as well as senior entitlement programs on the verge of bankruptcy.

We're facing an America with tens of millions of retirees who have no use for the younger generation except through the Social Security checks they pay for. Plus, the only thing that seniors love more than "Matlock" is voting to make sure they get their checks. What's the logical conclusion to a scenario where a majority of voters decides that the minority should pay for the humongous accumulation of entitlement and pension liabilities? It's not going to be pretty.
posted by Eric at 10:53 PM (0) comments

 
Mobile meets medical - Great article in the Globe today about how cellphones are being used by doctors for quick analysis: "As wireless networks proliferate, the cellphone finds a niche next to the stethoscope as a medical tool."
posted by Eric at 10:10 PM (1) comments

 
We gotta get out of this place

Boston Globe: "At a loss - A litany of woes, from taxes to high cost of housing, is driving many residents out of Massachusetts, and the state is struggling to woo others to come here, report says"

More than 2.2 million natives of Massachusetts now live elsewhere in the country, while 1.2 million people from other states live here. Massachusetts is the country's ninth worst in attracting residents from other states, the study shows. It ranked 48th in terms of losing residents to other states.

"The problem is that we just can't get people to come to Massachusetts as much as they want to leave," said Andrew Sum, the center's director and author of the report. "We need to start asking what we can do to make Massachusetts a more desirable place to live, why people don't want to come here to live."

Between 2000 and 2007, only Louisiana - which saw thousands flee after Hurricane Katrina - and New York lost more residents to other states, according to the report. More than 300,000 residents - about 5 percent of the state's population - left Massachusetts during that time, while the state's fertility rate ranked 46 out of 50 states.

Later in the article, the Globe suggests that, aside from the cold and high taxes, people are turned off by "the deep blue hue of the state's politics." Elsewhere in today's Globe is this section in an article by Jeff Jacoby about how Bay State taxes are spent in a deeply-Democratic government:

The Boston Globe recently reported that retirements are suddenly spiking at the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. Why? Because a new law taking effect in 2009 slightly reduces benefits for workers who retire before age 65. The major change: As of next year, retirees will have to pay 15 percent of their health insurance premium. Current retirees get free healthcare for life. That's in addition to their pensions, of course. MBTA workers can retire with a full pension after just 23 years on the job, at which point they are perfectly free to find another government job and get right back on the public payroll.

Such double-dipping is common in the public sector, just like so many other lucrative perks that government employees take for granted and most private employees can only dream about. "The nation is dividing into two classes of workers: those who have government benefits and those who don't," USA Today noted in 2007. "The gap is accelerating in every way - pensions, medical benefits, retirement ages." According to the Congressional Research Service, the pension collected by the average private-sector retiree is worth less than half of what a typical government retiree can expect. If you don't have your snout in the government trough, you can expect to work ever-longer hours and pay ever-higher taxes and fees to support those who do.

Those, for example, like Michael Mulhern. He is the 40-something former MBTA general manager who "retired" in 2005, began collecting a $130,000 annual pension, then hired on as head of the MBTA retirement fund, a job that pays about $225,000 annually. Mulhern's total take: more than $350,000 a year. He is just one illustration of a huge problem growing more urgent by the day - the staggering sums that taxpayers are shelling out for the care and feeding of avaricious public employees. In Massachusetts and nationwide, a backlash is coming.

It's not exactly pitchforks and torches at Beacon Hill, but the backlash is that Massachusetts residents are trekking south to find bigger houses, lower taxes, and more opportunity.
posted by Eric at 9:54 PM (7) comments

 
Payback's a, well, you know - Boston Globe: "As Clinton chances wane, old slights come due - Some prominent Democrats recall past grievances"
posted by Eric at 9:09 PM (0) comments

 
McCain on "Saturday Night Live" - He was good! And he has the "oldness" to lead the country.
posted by Eric at 12:08 AM (0) comments

 
Something maybe nothing in the Mideast

The Economist "An election in Kuwait":

First sentence: "What does a parliamentary election in Kuwait, on Saturday May 17th, suggest about the progress of democracy in the region as a whole?"

Last sentence: "If such pressures increase, in Bahrain, Kuwait or elsewhere, the demand for more democratic changes may rise, too."

Yeah, sure, OK.
posted by Eric at 11:43 PM (0) comments

 
My senator, America's senator - Prayers up for Ted Kennedy
posted by Eric at 12:33 PM (5) comments