Predictions for 2010 from Cato’s David Boaz

Do go read the entire (reasonably short) post, but here’s Boaz’s very sensible conclusion:

All of which is to explain why you’re not going to find any predictions for 2010 in this post.

Tuesday video — the brutality of Iran’s totalitarian state

No video fun here. This clip was posted at the Daily Dish and graphically illustrates the brutality and sheer immorality of the current Iranian leadership. The state is using law enforcement vehicles to savagely run over Iranian citizens rising against an increasingly totalitarian state.

Out of this list of security predictions for 2010 …

… from PC World, here’s three I’d like to see come to pass:

* The FBI issues tens of thousands of security letters to get records on individuals without warrants. Congress investigates and is appalled at the FBI’s “underreporting”. The FBI promises to do better (see 2009, and 2008 and 2007….). The 4th amendment continues to erode into meaninglessness.

* Real ID dies a deserved death and is abandoned in 2010. The brain dead idea of better-security-via-universal-ID unfortunately persists despite the enormous number of identity theft victims created by over-reliance on SSN.

* The Transportation Security Administration stops wasting billions of dollars in traveller delays by confiscating water bottles and removing shoes. Instead it focuses on real threats based on rational risk assessment, not security theater based on movie-plots (hat-tip Bruce Schneier). OK, unlikely, but I can dream, can’t I?

(Obviously that last one went out the window with the terrorism attempt over Christmas.)

The Green Revolution continues in Iran

The despotic regime in Iran must be feeling the heat. At every opportunity since the stolen election in June unrest has been breaking out across the nation. Today was an expected protest day, coinciding with a holiday honoring the holiest martyr of Shiite Islam and made even more potent after the death of Grand Ayatollah Ali Hossein Montazeri last week. The one-week day of mourning for Montazeri — a major player in the 1979 revolution and open critic of the recent regime crack-down against the Green Revolution protests — fell on this day adding fuel and emotion to the protest fire.

Here’s a link to the New York Times’ protest coverage, and breaking update’s from the NYT blog, the Lede.

From the second link:

Update | 2:49 p.m. My colleague Nazila Fathi has spoken with a doctor working at Najmieh hospital on  Jomhouri street in central Tehran, close to the site of violent clashes on Sunday. The doctor said that the hospital has have treated more than 60 people who were seriously injured and performed 17 operations on people with gunshot wounds. Three of the patients are in critical condition. The doctor also said that members of the security forces have filled the hospital.

Andrew Sullivan has done as much as any blogger in terms of getting the news of protest in Iran out there from the very beginning this summer. Here’s a very salient point on today’s activities:

This has to be seen now as a crippling blow to the coup regime. This vivid demonstration that they simply cannot command the assent of the Iranian people except by brutal, raw, thuggish violence, and that resistance to the regime is clearly stronger, more impassioned and angrier than ever before is their death knell. They have lost any shred of legitimacy – and the Green Revolution is outlasting them in conviction and energy and might.

The significance of this day, Ashura, the day Khomeini regarded as the turning point against the Shah, cannot be under-estimated. Its symbolic power in Shia Islam, its themes of resistance to tyranny to the last drop of blood, its fusion of religious mourning and political revolt: this makes it lethal to the fascist thugs who dropped any pretense of ruling by even tacit consent last June.

2010 — a look back, a look ahead

The New York Times has an AP article today that looks back at the last ten years and makes a few projections for the next ten covering nine sectors: banking, real estate, retail, health, manufacturing, automobiles, energy, airlines and media/technology.

From the link, here’s what the article predicts for energy:

THE DECADE AHEAD: By 2019, many cars may get 50 miles per gallon or better. Improved gas mileage, rising prices for gasoline and more energy-efficient homes are seen keeping demand for oil and natural gas at moderate levels in the U.S.

Even so, nearly half of the nation’s electricity still will come from coal even with more wind and solar energy sources.

Health Care reform is coming

And the form of the reform is taking shape. It’s a major issue in the U.S. and an insanely hot button topic in politics, made even more in modern politics after the defeat of Hillarycare in Clinton’s first term. I’ve stayed largely on the sidelines on heath care reform and have mostly sought as unbiased as possible ideas and opinions. I did think it was a strategic mistake for the GOP to effectively take itself out of the serious sausage-making of the bills and just throwing random poop at the walls to see what resonated as a decent attack line.

I’ve finally read one piece that makes me feel quite a bit better about the legislation that will hit Obama’s desk sometime in the near future, “Testing, Testing” by Atul Gawande in the December 14, 2009, issue of the New Yorker. Gawande is a M.D. and a regular New Yorker contributor and has written on the challenges of receiving and practicing medical care in the current climate. This article is measured, doesn’t really take any of the partisan sides other than to acknowledge something has to be done to change the status quo, and lays out a vision where the current legislation could start an ongoing process of continued improvement in heath care and its administration.

Whichever side of the reform debate you stand on, this article should be a priority read for a glimpse into what could be with the current legislation. It’s not going appease anyone who opposes the bill on either extreme, but it should make anyone who reads the article feel a bit better about the future of medicine in the United States.

In the article Gawande lays out parallels between the agriculture reform efforts of the twentieth century and the current effort at health care reform.

From the link, here’s the concluding graf:

Getting our medical communities, town by town, to improve care and control costs isn’t a task that we’ve asked government to take on before. But we have no choice. At this point, we can’t afford any illusions: the system won’t fix itself, and there’s no piece of legislation that will have all the answers, either. The task will require dedicated and talented people in government agencies and in communities who recognize that the country’s future depends on their sidestepping the ideological battles, encouraging local change, and following the results. But if we’re willing to accept an arduous, messy, and continuous process we can come to grips with a problem even of this immensity. We’ve done it before.

The publishing industry getting greedy

The New York Times has an interesting story today on e-books, copyright and backlist titles.

Here’s the key point with this particular publishing issue:

While most traditional publishers have included e-book rights in new author contracts for 15 years, many titles were originally published before e-books were explicitly included in contracts.

And here’s where the publishing houses are getting greedy:

Several publishers who say they retain e-book rights on old contracts are working to amend those agreements to insert digital royalty rates. A spokesman for Simon & Schuster, Adam Rothberg, said the company has amended many old contracts. “Our plan is to publish all our backlist in e-book form,” he said.

Contracts were signed with no idea the concept of a digital book would ever exist. Those contracts are for the rights to publish those books as physical, bound copies of the text. Publishing contracts are very specific on what rights are conferred, even to the point many publishers don’t include international rights to the books they sign for U.S. rights. E-books certainly fall under the category of an entirely new class of rights, not something that can be “ameneded” after the fact and after the author of those books, and signer of the contract, is no longer around to agree to any amendment. If the heirs to the author’s copyright want to take electronic rights elsewhere, they should be free to do so.

If publishers want to include e-books in older contracts, those rights should be separately negotiated, not amended. I hope the courts come down on the side of the artist on this issue.

Traditional publishing is dying an increasingly quick death right now. I wonder why?

There’s one thing I’d like see during the health care reform debate

And that thing is an unbiased as possible (I know, I know — that’s probably a pipe dream) breakdown on the business costs for the various plans. Health care reform is a huge and necessarily complicated topic taking into account entire large swaths of the current U.S. economy, and corporate health care benefits are front and center since most Americans currently get health insurance through their employer. So much so that health insurance actually stifles job mobility because some people are afraid to lose their current health benefits and the grandfathered in “preexisting conditions.”

Now the complex topic of heath care reform has become so much more so with the House and Senate muddying the waters through the sausage-making that is legislation. Right now the major national business organizations oppose both the House and the Senate health bills, but how do the bills actually break down and affect businesses of different sizes? I’ve read in many places where small business owners are looking forward to health care reform and see the issue along the lines of, “well, reform couldn’t be any worse than what we have right now.”

With all that in mind in mind, what I’d like to see is a clear auditing of both the House and Senate health care reform bills and how much each costs businesses of different size — size in number of employees and in annual revenue. I have a feeling health care reform would actually be an improvement for businesses that most anyone would consider small, but I don’t know and I’m too lazy (and probably incapable) of doing the policy wonkery number crunching to figure this out. Anyone out there game?

TARP costs coming in $200B under expectations

Looks like the Obama administration is going to put some toward the deficit and some toward Main Street. Given the facts on the ground, this sounds like fairly conservative fiscal policy to me. Quite a revelation after the last eight years.

From the link:

The government recently announced that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), established at the height of the financial crisis last year to recapitalize the nation’s banking system, will cost $200 billion less than expected. Obama wants that money redeployed into additional stimulus initiatives: “This gives us a chance to pay down the deficit faster than we thought possible and to shift funds that would have gone to help the banks on Wall Street to help create jobs on Main Street,” Obama said Tuesday.

Getting Main Street hiring again is key to job recovery: Small businesses have created 65% of new jobs in the past 15 years, according to government estimates. Obama’s latest set of proposals includes several brand-new measures, as well as extensions of existing stimulus acts.

TARP stopped an “economic panic” …

… as a starting point for the entire stimulus program according to a Congressional Oversight Panel audit, but the overall report card looks like a middling “cee” at best.

From the link:

The independent panel that oversees the government’s financial bailout program concluded in a year-end review that, despite flaws and lingering problems, the program “can be credited with stopping an economic panic.”

The Congressional Oversight Panel, which issued the report, was created in October 2008 by the same law that established the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The panel has often been critical of the Treasury Department’s management of the bailout operation, especially at its start in the Bush administration but also under the Obama administration.

In the latest monthly report released on Wednesday, the panel again criticized the Treasury Department under Secretary Timothy F. Geithner for “failure to articulate clear goals or to provide specific measures of success for the program” as it has morphed over time from rescuing financial institutions to propping up securitization markets, auto manufacturers and home mortgages in danger of default. The panel also described the program’s foreclosure mitigation efforts as inadequate.

Mr. Geithner announced Wednesday that the administration would extend the bailout program until Oct. 3, 2010. In a letter, Mr. Geithner told lawmakers that the extension was needed to assist families and stabilize financial markets.

The small business credit crunch and unemployment

These two elements — little to no credit for small business and a difficult rebound from deep unemployment — are integrally tied together. Small business jobs are the backbone of the U.S. economy, and small businesses need revolving credit to help ensure cash flow. When your accounts receivable go from averaging 20 days to averaging 45 days, ongoing business expenses become an issue.

I know several small businesses that are currently in a state where invoices are getting paid late so in consequence the companies pay late and the entire cycle helps no one. With banks not providing credit to worthy small businesses the entire system is being ground down by a lack of liquidity.

This example is almost beyond belief and perfectly illustrates where the banking industry — both local and national — is doing real damage to the economy’s small business backbone.

From the link:

Veteran Chicago restaurateur Ivan Matsunaga needs a $300,000 loan to finance a renovation of his flagship pizza restaurant into a higher-end eatery. The revamp is required for his lease renewal, but it will also create job opportunities: Matsunaga estimates that he’ll need five additional staffers to run the updated restaurant.

Three banks turned down his loan request — including a community bank Matsunaga personally invested in at its launch three years ago.

“How perplexing is it that they would not reciprocate? What type of banking environment exists where they currently have $100,000 of my money and yet they won’t give me a loan?,” Matsunaga asked at the hearing. “If my bank were to approve my loan today, I, for one, would create jobs immediately.”

Big banks have shaved more than $10 billion from their small business lending totals over the past six months, which drew sharp criticism from Senators at Wednesday’s hearing. “I know that my situation is not unique,” Matsunaga said. “I have had numerous discussions with my peers who are frustrated by these same issues.”

The bank bailout may end up in the black

Who’d a thunk this a year ago?

From the link:

The Treasury Department expects to recover all but $42 billion of the $370 billion it has lent to ailing companies since the financial crisis began last year, with the portion lent to banks actually showing a slight profit, according to a new Treasury report.

The new assessment of the $700 billion bailout program, provided by two Treasury officials on Sunday ahead of a report to Congress on Monday, is vastly improved from the Obama administration’s estimates last summer of $341 billion in potential losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. That figure anticipated more financial troubles requiring intervention.

The officials said the government could ultimately lose $100 billion more from the bailout program in new loans to banks, aid to troubled homeowners and credit to small businesses.

Still, the new estimates would lower the administration’s deficit forecast for this fiscal year, which began in October, to about $1.3 trillion, from $1.5 trillion.

Concerned about a website’s privacy policy? You have a forum

Not a bad idea from the Center for Democracy and Technology.

From the link:

Don’t like what a website has done with your personal information? Don’t understand its privacy policies? A new privacy complaint site is now open for business–created by an Internet freedom and privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. called the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

Complaints can be shared with your social network via sites like Twitter and Facebook, and also forwarded to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If enough complaints surface, it’s possible that the FTC will launch an investigation into whether a website is violate existing laws.

The larger point is to create a cudgel to get Congress interested  in enactingcomprehensive Internet privacy legislation. CDT has already put out a pretty good guide to online privacy problems, explaining existing and often narrowly-written patchwork of court rulings and laws, most of them falling hopelessly behind rapid technological advances.

Modest economic improvement according to latest Beige Book

Of course unemployment remains the fly in this economic ointment.

From the link:

The US Federal Reserve has said that economic activities have improved modestly in recent months, primarily helped by better consumer spending.

However, the labour market situation continued to remain weak with rising layoffs and sluggish hiring activities, the apex bank noted.

The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, which provides a snapshot of economic activities in the 12 districts, said “economic conditions have generally improved modestly” in recent months.

In eight districts, the activities witnessed improvement while it remained little or mixed in the remaining four.

Another TARP bank pays the nation back

This week it’s Bank of America. Good to see the money back in public coffers, but this move doesn’t exonerate the company for its malfeasance over the past year. At any rate it’s another $45 billion in bailout dollars the taxpayers get back, plus an extra $2.54 billion in Treasury payments.

Of course do you think BofA, or any other of the TARP banks for that matter, would be magnanimously paying the public back so quickly if the Feds hadn’t cracked down this year and seized control of executive pay and other business functions? I want the banking industry working outside of government influence, but I also want the banking industry working without using public money with no-strings-attached.

We all know …

… the 2000s were a fiscal disaster — tough markets, bubbles growing to bursting by the end of the decade and drunken sailor federal spending by a GOP-led government. The party of fiscal conservatism? Hardly.

Things were bad, but look at the longer view to get an idea of exactly how bad using just one indicator — the S&P 500 index (emphasis mine):

With the ’00s about to flip the odometer to the ’10s, there has been a raft of commentary about how lousy a decade this has been. Stock investors can vouch for that: The ten years since Y2K are on track to produce the worst total returns for investors since the 1930s. And, after the roaring ’80s and ’90s, the disappointment of the last decade is all the more galling.

Indeed, it will be hard for investors to wash the taste of trillions of dollars of losses from their mouths.

In both the 1980s and the 1990s, the broad S&P 500-stock index index provided a total return (which includes dividends) of more than 400%, according to Capital IQ, a Standard & Poor’s business. The total return for the S&P 500 since New Years 2000 has been negative 10.8%.

Now the Bush 43 administration and GOP Congress are given a pass on the events of 9/11 and how that disrupted the entire American social structure, including commerce. But that event was over eight years ago, plenty of time for the party of fiscal restraint to get the economy back on track, right? Not so much. And where did the profligate spending go? Into half-assed and outright fraudulent foreign adventures:

Hirsch believes a key factor for stocks in the 2000s was the September 11 terrorist attacks and the U.S. government’s expensive involvement in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Vietnam War hurt stock returns in the 1970s, he notes, while World War II kept the market down in the early 1940s.

Of course Bush inherited what is now considered a highly over-valued market that was ripe for a fall back to earth. September 11 was the balloon bursting sledgehammer and seven additional years of absolutely horrible fiscal policy and economic management has put us where we are right now, and leaving a steaming bag for Obama’s administration that will most likely dominate the bulk of his first term, if not much, much longer.

And right wing media is now happily blaming Obama for the economic conditions on the ground.

Obama’s Af-Pak speech

I don’t have too much of an immediate reaction other than to say it’s a good sign both political extremes are for the most part very unhappy with the plan.

Here’s the text of the speech:

Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women of our armed services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan–the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my Administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion. It is an honor for me to do so here–at West Point–where so many men and women have prepared to stand up for our security, and to represent what is finest about our country.

To address these issues, it is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.

(head below the fold for the rest … )

More stem cell lines open for research

Very welcome news and finally a tangible shift away from the idiotic christianist policies of the Bush 43 administration. This is an area of medical research where the United States should be world leaders, not playing catch up after eight years of a completely medieval stance toward science and medicine.

From the link:

The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it had approved 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for use by federally financed researchers, with another 96 lines under review.

The action followed President Obama’s decision in March to expand the number of such cell lines beyond those available under a policy set by President George W. Bush, which permitted research to begin only with lines already available on Aug. 9, 2001.

Since that date, biomedical researchers supported by the N.I.H. have had to raise private money to derive the cells, which are obtained from the fertilized embryos left over from in vitro fertility clinics.

With federal money banned from being used in any part of the work on the derived lines, researchers had to divide their laboratories and go to extreme lengths to separate research materials based on the financing source.

“You can imagine what it meant not to be able to carry a pipette from one room to another,” said Ali H. Brivanlou, a researcher at Rockefeller University. “They even had to repaint the walls to ensure no contamination by federal funds.”

Little Green Footballs’ Charles Johnson renounces the right

Not really too surprising given the overall tone of LGF the last year or so, but in a sense the right wing blogosphere lost something of a rock star with this announcement and ten part list of exactly why Johnson is no longer affiliated with right wing politics.

From the link:

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”

This autobiographical animated film from 2007 is an excellent view into the Iran of the last thirty years. It opens with the Iranian Revolution and the high hopes of all Iranians looking to get out from under the Shah only to find out the Islamacists ended up as bad or worse.

The film is informative, happy, wistful and more, and it was very interesting for me to watch after this year’s ongoing green wave in Iran against the hard line Islamic leadership and the election by the ruling despots.

Hit this link to find Persepolis on DVD at Amazon.

Want a reason to wean the US from OPEC?

How about bringers of democracy being “cursed” by a Saudi prince this week.

The link goes to MEMRI, an excellent resource into Mideast media — a resource I don’t tap into near often enough. Long ago I used to read through MEMRI’s offerings on a regular basis, but it’s been out of my usual rotation for a while and ought to get back in there.

From the first link, the intro:

In an op-ed in the Saudi daily Al-Watan, Saudi Prince Saud bin Mansour bin Saud bin ‘Abd Al-’Aziz  took on Saudi and Arab liberals and reformists and the Western ideal of democracy. Without naming names, he said that these people were promoting Western democracy despite all its flaws and despite the fact that Islam is vastly superior. Calling democracy “demo-khratiyya” (i.e. “demo-mendacity”), the prince said that writers who criticized Saudi Arabia needed an “ideological bloodletting” to purge them of their corrupt ideas.

And here’s some of the prince’s rabbit pellets:

“Those who hasten to endorse the Western ‘openness’ – whose arrows appear gentle but [carry] a fatal load – have they forgotten our principles and our clarity? Have [these people] not noticed that the West is always marketing democracy as a secular and civil system, not a religious [system]? [Struck by] waves of political Alzheimer’s, they keep telling us that Islam is not democratic.

“A curse on anyone who wants to enforce this demo-khratiyya on all political and constitutional issues. A curse on all those dictatorships that masquerade as demo-khratiyya in order to destroy what they define as third-world countries!

“It should be remembered that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the Custodian of the Two Holy Places, and that the sons or residents of the homeland have never been denied their rights. Our country’s structure is perfect [thanks to] Islam, which has established the [concept of] shura [i.e consultation] and the protection of rights, freedom, justice and anything [else] of value, as laid down by this generous religion.”

3 Quarks Daily looking for best political blog post of the year

The year dating back to November 23, 2008, and with a $1K top prize to boot.

From the link:

The winners of the polictics prize will be announced on December 21, 2009. Here’s the schedule:

Today:

• The nominating process is hereby declared open. Please nominate your favorite blog entry in the field of politics by placing the URL for the blog post (the permalink) in the comments section of this post. You may also add a brief comment describing the entry and saying why you think it should win.
• Each person can only nominate one blog post.
• Entries must be in English.
• The editors of 3QD reserve the right to reject entries that we feel are not appropriate.
• The blog entry may not be more than a year old from today. In other words, it must have been written after November 23, 2008.
• You may also nominate your own entry from your own or a group blog (and we encourage you to).
• Guest columnists at 3 Quarks Daily are also eligible to be nominated, and may also nominate themselves if they wish.
• Nominations are limited to the first 100 entries.
• You may also comment here on our prizes themselves, of course!

December 2, 2009

• The nominating process will end at 11:59 PM (NYC time) of this date.
• The public voting will be opened immediately afterwards.

December 9, 2009

• Public voting ends at 11:59 PM (NYC time).

December 21, 2009

• The winners are announced.

That SBA stimulus cash loan program? Gone

Well, more correctly out of money.

From the link:

The stimulus cash that helped boost small business lending this year just ran out.

The Small Business Administration said Monday that it has run through all of the $375 million Congress allocated to temporarily waive fees and boost guarantees on loans backed by the SBA’s lending programs. Businesses still hoping for a slice of the pie can get in line, cross their fingers and wait.

Small business are getting bigger

At least in the eyes and definition of the Small Business Administration. Both small- and mid-sized businesses can use all the help they can get right now, but these moves seem to always open a back door for the very large structures in the corporate world to get hold of some unneeded “free” money through subsidiaries that are big, but just enough not so to qualify.

From the link:

The Small Business Administration will redefine what “small” means for firms in hundreds of industriesby revamping size standards over the next two years. The result: More businesses will qualify for all types of SBA financial aid, such as the flagship 7(a) loan guarantee program.

The SBA hasn’t taken a hard look at its size standards for more than 25 years, although it periodically makes inflation adjustments, as it did last year. There’s no doubt that in the last quarter-century, changes in industry structure, market conditions and business models have changed the definition of “small” for all sorts of businesses. The SBA’s effort will involve reviewing the standards for businesses in about 900 industries and adjusting them upward — or, in a few cases, downward — as needed.

Also from the link:

In the first round of this size standard revamp, SBA is looking at 138 industries and proposing to change the standards for 71 of them. For example, SBA wants to raise the cap on annual receipts for jewelry stores from $7 million to $25 million, which would allow a lot more stores to qualify for aid. The cap for nurseries and garden centers is proposed go from $27 million to $30 million.

Is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on its last legs?

Looks like it. In this topsy-turvy political world Sarbox was ushered in by a GOP-controlled Congress and is being systematically gutted by a Democratic Congress. Of course one the unintended consequences of Sarbox was an untenable burden on small business. Wall Street was going to motor along, accounting firms were going to bank and Main Street was going to take it on the chin once again.

From the link:

The House Financial Services Committee has approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 to allow most companies to never comply with the law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to exempt additional companies as well.

Some veterans of past reform efforts were left sputtering with rage. “That the Democratic Party is the vehicle for overturning the most pro-investor legislation in the past 25 years is deeply disturbing,” said Arthur Levitt, a Democrat who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under former President Clinton. “Anyone who votes for this will bear the investors’ mark of Cain.”

Those who favored the amendment saw it differently. They were simply out to help small businesses, which would be burdened by having to report on whether they maintained acceptable financial controls, and to have auditors check on whether those controls worked.

There are other threats to Sarbanes-Oxley as well.

Media figures are truly taking over the GOP

This isn’t going to end well for the Republican Party.

From the link:

Pundits have used their media stages to encourage political action before, but people like Mr. Beck and Mr. Hannity are taking on outsize roles now, political experts and conservative commentators say. One reason, they say, is the weakened state of the Republican Party.

The media figures’ roles may exacerbate the ideological feuds that are already roiling the party. For the diffuse tea party movement that taps into anti-government sentiments, “the media guys are the closest things we even have to a leader,” said Adam Brandon, the vice president for communications at FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group.

These efforts are reminiscent of the Contract With America pledge made by conservatives during the 1994 elections, though some Republicans who are uncomfortable with media personalities taking on new political roles note that that effort originated with lawmakers.

Mobile phones and driving just don’t mix

Even “hands-free” cell phone use. I’ve written on this exact topic for an insurance website and cited the same studies referenced in this article. I’m not even going to comment on the inanity of doing any sort of texting while driving — sending or receiving – but anyone who has ever spoken on a cell phone when driving (a group that includes pretty much anyone who has access to a car and a mobile phone) knows there were times that you lost total awareness of something happening on the road around you, be it a traffic signal, a missed exit, a near miss on a lane change, or something else. The kicker to all the studies is research has very conclusively proven it doesn’t matter if the cell phone use is hand-held or hands-free, it is simply more dangerous — much more dangerous — than driving sans mobile device.

From the second link:

Studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, for example, show that drivers are four times more likely to have an accident if they are talking on the phone — hands-free or not — while driving.

The reason, researchers say, is that drivers often become engrossed in their conversation, rather than focusing on driving, even if their hands are on the wheel. “Once a conversation begins, we don’t see a difference between hand-held and hands-free,” says Adrian Lund, president of the institute.

And from the first link, the pull quotes I chose for this web content created for an insurance aggregator client:

How dangerous is mixing driving with cell phone use?

The quick answer is pretty dangerous. The National Safety Commission released the results of a number of studies showing distractions, particularly cell phone use while driving, cause many accidents.

Here are two excerpts from the NSC alert:

“A study conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute concluded that almost 80 percent of motor vehicle crashes and 65% of near crashes involve driver inattention within three seconds before the event. While the study looked at all different types of driver distractions, it listed use of wireless communication devices (cell phones and PDAs) as the most common form of driver distraction”

And,

“An earlier University of Utah study showed that a 20 year old driver on a cell phone had the same reaction time as a 70 year old. Regardless of age, drivers on cell phones were 18% slower in stepping on the brakes, and 17% slower in regaining their speed after braking. They also kept a greater following distance and slower speed than drivers who were not using cell phones, which contributes to congestion on the roadways.”

Based on these statistics a number of states have banned cell phone use that isn’t hands-free when driving, many more cities and towns have passed similar bans and new cell phone related ordinances are being enacted on a regular basis. The studies into the safety of cell phone use find there is little difference in the distractions created by hands-free or hand-held conversations when driving. It goes without requiring emphasis that texting while driving is very distracting and dangerous.

New jobs bill this year?

There’s not much time before the recess, but looks like some measure of employment relief could happen.

From the link:

Continued rising unemployment in the U.S. is prompting House Democratic leaders to consider a jobs bill before lawmakers leave Washington and end the first session of the 111th Congress on December 18, according to House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md. Hoyer told reporters on November 17 that a second stimulus bill is unlikely, but lawmakers might consider taking some type of legislative action to boost jobs. He declined to list specific proposals that might be under consideration.

More news from the “no duh” department

Today it’s from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner:

“This credit crunch is not over,” Geithner at a small business financing forum in Washington hosted by the Treasury. “It may feel dramatically better for large companies, but it is not over for small businesses across the country.”

The stimulus package and science

Scientific research wasn’t left out of this year’s stimulus plan to the tune of $21 billion, and a federal website tracks all that stimulus.

From the link:

The stimulus plan passed by the US Congress earlier this year provided $21 billion for scientific R&D to be allocated through the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and other agencies. (The full text of the bill is available in this large pdf file.) The debate still rages amongst politicians and economists about just how many jobs the $787 billion bill has created. In the meantime, the government has launched an interesting website detailing where that scientific R&D money went.

Call it propaganda–the site is called ScienceWorksForUS–but it’s interesting to browse through the detailed list and see which research projects were funded and for how much.