Tony Blankley channels Christopher Lasch

I think he might be onto something:

The Obama presidency is both the high watermark, and the beginning of the end, for elite multicultural materialism in America.

A question for Martin O'Malley

When you talk about working families, who are you leaving out?

If he were honest about it, O'Malley's answer would be "no one."

Almost everyone who hears these words thinks O'Malley is talking about their family. In my view, the phrase is meaningless. Every time I hear it, I think the speaker is trying to pull something over on me.

Check out the Lutherville-Timonium Patch

The newest media player in the greater BaltoNorth area.

They're covering local politics, high school sports and so on, giving some much-needed competition to the Towson Times. I've heard good things about them, but have a concern already about the slant of their political coverage.

Here's a nice article by Scott Lowe about Dulaney High School's cross country team and their annual Barnhart Invitational race. (As comparison, here's Tom Worgo's Towson Times piece.)

On the other hand, it seems like ninety percent of the political column-inches so far by Nick DiMarco, Matt Cruz and Doug Donovan are about Democrats.

C'mon guys.

L/T is one of the most Republican areas in Maryland. If you're going to write a puff piece about Democratic campaigns, try to give at least a semblance of balance and publish some pictures of Republicans too.

UPDATE: I missed Nayana Davis's article about Todd Huff's victory over Bryan McIntire. Plenty of column inches there, but the tenor of the article is clearly, if mildly, anti-Republican:

• The story devotes several early paragraphs to miscommunication between the candidates regarding McIntire's concession.
• In addition, the story quotes a Republican candidate swearing. Democrats use expletives too. But somehow I don't expect to see their swears surrounded by quote marks in a Patch story anytime soon.

Landmark environmental legislation passed during Republican administrations

Here's what's happened under the GOP* in the last half-century:

1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
1970 Creation of EPA
1970 Clean Air Act extension
1972 Federal Water Pollution Control amendments to the Clean Water Act
1974 Safe Drinking Water Act
1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
1986 Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA)
1990 Clean Air Act Amendments

In comparison, the list of major environmental legislation passed during Democratic administrations is short and unimpressive.

The lesson for environmentalists:

if you want to pass major environmental legislation, your odds are poor under Democrats and much much better under Republicans

*Don't get me wrong. I acknowledge that Democrats played key roles -- many many key roles -- in conceiving these laws and shepherding them through Congress.

Photo source: World in My View

6 reasons why Maryland Democrats and Martin O'Malley are overrated on the environment

1. The Maryland League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is wildly biased.
2. Democrats often take environmentalists for granted.
3. BayStat doesn’t have many environmental stats.
4. Neither did CityStat.
5. Democrats like to create complex programs which need enforcement resources that don’t exist.
6. The environmental agenda of Democrats tends to be a "hero sandwich of good intentions." But their results are often mediocre-to-poor.

7 reasons why environmentalists should vote Republican

1. Research, analysis and reporting done by green Democrats is often shallow and misleading.
2. Republicans are more skeptical of the environmentalist agenda. Democrats often accept it as an article of faith.
3. Republicans are less likely to impose technology mandates because they know government has a terrible track record.
4. Republicans look more closely at the effects of environmental legislation on business and the economy.
5. A significant majority of major environmental legislation since WWII was passed during Republican administrations.
6. Republicans tend to focus on results. Democrats tend to focus on effort and good intentions.
7. Republicans push harder for free market solutions that cost less and accomplish more.

The most pro-black thing we can do: fight a white-hot "war on the War on Drugs"

John McWhorter, writing for Root:

The War on Drugs destroys black families. ...

The War on Drugs discourages young black men from seeking legal employment. ...

The War on Drugs lends a badge of honor to spending time in prison. ...

What will turn black America around for good is not more theatrical marches but the elimination of a policy that prevents too many people from doing their best.

After welfare reform in 1996, countless people thought that black women would wind up shivering on sidewalk grates. They underestimated the basic human resilience of black people.

In the same way, if the War on Drugs is ended, the same people will assume that young black men will wander about jobless and starving. They will not, because they are human beings with basic resilience and survival instincts as well. ...

Meanwhile, studies suggest that addiction rates do not rise when anti-drug policies are pulled back

Read the whole thing. John McWhorter rocks.

Khan Academy: will Bill Gates's favorite teacher "shake the foundations" of public education?

I think he probably will.

From Chicago Boyz

The existence of Khan Academy should force us to question everything about how we will educate the coming generations of Americans.

Here's the CNN / Fortune article about Bill Gates & Sal Khan.

And here's Khan's wonderfully inspirational speech given at one of Mark Hurst's recent GEL conferences. It explains who he is, why he started the academy, and why his simple approach is so breathtakingly effective.

Democratic state senator Ulyssses Currie indicted for fraud and bribery

I saw Senator Currie run some committee meetings in Annapolis a few years ago. At the time I was struck by his air. You could almost see his sense of entitlement radiating from every pore.

From Annie Linskey's article today in the Sun:

prosecutors allege that Currie accepted payments from Shoppers totaling $245,816 in exchange for helping the company navigate state bureaucracy from 2003 to 2008.

To track his favors, Currie created a document titled "Accomplishments on Behalf of Shoppers," in which he listed 12 state and legislative hurdles he had removed to benefit the company, according to the indictment.

Read the whole thing.

As always seems to happen in cases like this, mistakes were made!

They noted that Currie did not report his work for Shoppers on his state ethics forms. Kelberman described the lack of disclosure as "mistakes" that were "not intentional."

In Senator Currie's world, it would seem that financial accountability is only for the little people:

Currie has been beset by other problems. He replaced his longtime campaign treasurer after filing a financial disclosure Aug. 10 which showed that $187,000 had been drained from the account with no explanation for how it was spent.

UPDATE: this is just one more reason to vote Republican this November. The quality of Republican candidates is particularly strong in Baltimore County this year (and accross Maryland) when compared to previous years. If you're an Independent or even a Democrat, please look carefully at the GOP candidates in your district.

And consider voting for them.

If you do, perhaps one day I'll realize my dream of living in an honest-to-goodness two-party state.

The big environmentalist flip-flop

Environmentalists used to challenge the pronouncements of mainstream scientists and technical experts. Walter Russell Mead points out that things have changed:

when it comes to global warming, the shoe is on the other foot. Now it is suddenly the environmentalists — who’ve often spent lifetimes raging against experts and scientists who debunk organic food and insist that GMOs and nuclear power plants are safe — who are the pious advocates of science and experts. Suddenly, it’s a sin to question the wisdom of the Scientific Consensus. Scientists are, after all, experts; their work is peer-reviewed and we uneducated rubes must sit back and shut up when the experts tell us what’s right.

More, environmentalists have found a big and simple fix for all that ails us: a global carbon cap. One big problem, one big fix. It is not just wrong to doubt that a fix is needed, it is wrong to doubt that the Chosen Fix will work.

Annual "free" parking subsidy in US is $127 billion/year ? Yikes

Tyler Cowen in the NY Times:

it’s a classic tale of how subsidies, use restrictions, and price controls can steer an economy in wrong directions. Car owners may not want to hear this, but we have way too much free parking.

... Donald C. Shoup, professor of urban planning at [UCLA] has made this idea a cause, as presented in his 733-page book, “The High Cost of Free Parking.”

... the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. ...

... Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars — and overusing cars too. ...

As Professor Shoup wrote, “Minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars.”

... 99 percent of all automobile trips in the United States end in a free parking space, rather than a parking space with a market price. In his book, Professor Shoup estimated that the value of the free-parking subsidy to cars was at least $127 billion in 2002, and possibly much more. ...

As Professor Shoup puts it: “Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist.”

Can citizens in Maryland record police? Asst. AG McDonald says in most cases they CAN

From the Sun, via NPR

Marylanders appear to have the right to record interactions with police officers with devices such as video cameras and mobile phones, according to an opinion by the state attorney general's office. The advisory letter was issued as several people face or have been threatened with criminal charges for taping police.

It's unlikely that most interactions with police could be considered private, as some law enforcement agencies have interpreted the state's wiretapping act, wrote Assistant Attorney General Robert McDonald. The conclusion is based on prior rulings and opinions of courts in other states.

Del. Sandy Rosenberg:

[The opinion] makes the point that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when a police officer arrests a citizen, which makes it perfectly legal for a citizen to videotape or have an oral record of the arrest

Good!

The caveat:

The opinion does not carry the weight of law but is meant to guide judges and state agencies.

Paul Rahe, superstar

His prescription for the GOP, at BigGovernment.com:

what is required is a return to first principles carried out at the ballot box and enforced on the hapless hacks in the Republican Party by a public sentiment fierce, fully aroused, and no longer willing to tolerate half measures.

Read the whole thing.

Rahe (pronounce "Ray") is also very good in this interview with Peter Robinson.

Makes me want to read his book, Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift.

"It's the Uncertainty, Stupid"

Tom Blumer, writing about Ben Barnanke:

But there’s only so much Ben and the Fed can do. In Congressional testimony, Bernanke essentially admitted that he has done virtually all he can:

[E}ven as the Federal Reserve continues prudent planning for the ultimate withdrawal of extraordinary monetary policy accommodation, we also recognize that the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain.

The key task for Obama and the Congress is to smooth the path for business hiring by reducing regulatory uncertainty.

This isn't rocket science. It's very basic political economics.

"Green Dreams Die Ugly on Capitol HIll"

Walter Russell Mead after an excellent summary of the failures of Big Green, describes the task at hand:

To meet the challenges of the 21st century, likely to be the most challenging and difficult period in human history thus far, we are going to have to raise our game. Civil society (especially but not only the environmental movement) has a necessary and vital role to play, but on the whole at the moment it is just not up to its job. ...

One of the many jobs on the plate of the rising generations will be the need to rethink and restructure the whole concept of civil society and the NGO. ...

The environment matters; sustaining the diversity and vitality of the beautiful world in which we are privileged to live is one of the two or three most vital challenges before the human race. The greens have been wrong about many things, but about this they are undeniably and courageously right.

Read the whole thing.

Speed cameras: Maryland out of step with rest of US

We're just getting started with speed cameras here, while at least one other state, Arizona, is dropping their program because it has been so unpopular and generated less revenue than expected.

2009-2010: the year the excesses of the green movement came back to earth

Walter Russell Mead:

It’s not about Climategate and Glaciergate. It’s not about the science. It’s not even about public confidence in the integrity of the green movement ...

The core green problem is about the credibility of its policy proposals and the viability of the political strategy the big green groups pushed to enact them. ...

the [recent] scandals may not discredit or even really affect the underlying scientific arguments about climate change but they do cast doubt on the perspicacity of the movement’s leadership — and that a fundamental rethink is called for.

He suggests, plausibly, that the Copenhagen summit may have been a high water mark for the overly-politicized wing of the environmental movement.

Read the whole thing.

Maryland LCV scorecard bias : Part 2, water qualtiy

Here are LCV's gubernatorial Water Quality grades for the past three administrations:

97 ]]]]]]]] . . . . .B- (Glendening/DEM)
01 ]]]]]]]]]] . . . B+ (Glendening/DEM)
04 ]]]]]]]]] . . . .B (Ehrlich/GOP) <----------------
06 ]]]] . . . . . . . D+ (Ehrlich/GOP
08 ]]]]]]]]]]]] . A (O'Malley/DEM)

Note especially Bob Ehrlich's "B" grade in 2004. LCV gave him this grade shortly after his Bay restoration fund (aka the "flush tax") was enacted. Here's what the the ACB's Bay Journal wrote about the Bay Restoration Fun shortly after it passed:

In what environmentalists called Maryland’s biggest step toward cleaning the Chesapeake Bay in decades, the General Assembly approved new levies on sewer users and septic owners to fund nutrient reduction programs in the state.
. . .

“This is a huge victory for the Bay, the most significant environmental advance in Maryland in nearly 20 years,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Will Baker.

Hmmm. The "most significant environmental advance" in nearly 20 years, and LCV can muster only a B for Ehrlich? Two years later they reverted to their norm -- where Republicans are rated roughly two letter grades below Democrats -- and bumped him down to a D+.

But what exactly have Democrats accomplished to merit their far superior grades?

To help answer this question, I turned to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's annual State of the Bay reports covering 1999 through 2008. Specifically, I looked at CBF's overall measure of bay health as well as the numbers for (1) nitrogen (2) phosphorous, (3) dissolved oxygen, (4) water clarity, and (5) toxics.

For Glendening, I compared the CBF numbers for the last three years of his second term (2002 vs 1999). For Ehrlich, I looked at 2006 vs 2002, and for O'Malley I crunched the numbers for 2008 vs 2006.

Here are the results: Based solely on this CBF data -- surprise!!! -- Ehrlich had the best actual results. Here they are:

OVERALL BAY HEALTH

Ehrlich............. ]]]]]]] 7% improvement
O'Malley.......... ]]] 3% improvement
Glendening [[[[ 4% worse


NITROGEN

Ehrlich.............. ]]]]]] 6% improvement
O'Malley........... 0% change
Glendening....... 0% change


PHOSPHOROUS

Ehrlich............................]]]]]]]]]]]]] ~~~~]]]]]]]] 81% improvement
Glendening.................... 0% change
O'Malley........... [[[~[[[[ 21% worse


DISSOLVED OXYGEN

Ehrlich................. ]]]]]]] 7% improvement
Glendening...;...... 0% change
O'Malley... [[~[[ 13% worse


WATER CLARITY

Glendening.......... 0% change
Ehrlich......... [[[[[[ 6% worse
O'Malley.... [[[[[[[ 7% worse


TOXICS

O'Malley .................. 0% change
Ehrlich................ [[[[ 4% worse
Glendening.... [[[[[[[ 7% worse

Perhaps there is something wrong with these numbers. If so, I'd love to hear about it from the Maryland LCV (or anyone else out there), especially Cindy Schwartz or Frederick Hoover.

Environmentalists need to think more like engineers and statisticians

This item appeared recently in The Economist's Bagehot column:

Political commentators, in other words, have concerned themselves with what will happen; what has happened; and what should happen. Few have addressed what is happening—that is, whether policies work and how the country is changing.

The author was talking about the state of political commentary, but the insight made me think of environmental watchdogs like the Maryland League of Conservation Voters and Environment Maryland.

Such groups tend to operate in their heads, theorizing and dreaming about laws, politics and programs. They really should spend more time thinking like pragmatic engineers and creative statisticians.

They should also keep one foot in the real measurable world by putting more effort into improving monitoring methods, collecting new data and finding better ways to analyze it and present it.

Stewart Brand (pro) debates Mark Z. Jacobson (con) on nuclear energy

Compliments of TED.

To my mind, Brand--the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog--is much more convincing. As I wrote before, I highly recommend his book, Whole Earth Discipline.

More on Brand here.

In his talk, Brand recommends two other books:

• James Hansen's Storms of My Grandchildren (5 stars on Amazon) and
• David McKay's book Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air (also 5 stars).

Bias at Maryland LCV: scorecards seem to measure intentions instead of results

Here are LCV's grades on Air Quality for the past three administrations:

97 ]]]]]]]]]]]] A (Glendening/DEM)
01 ]]]]]]]]]]] A- (Glendening/DEM)
04 ]]]]] ......... C- (Ehrlich/GOP)
06 ]]]]]]......... C (Ehrlich/GOP)
08 ]]]]]]]]]]]] A (O'Malley/DEM)

An O'Malley administration report (Improving Maryland'sAir Quality 1990-2008) describes air quality progress under Ehrlich and O'Malley as follows:

For the past 6 years [4 under Ehrlich and 2 under O'Malley] this improvement has been nothing short of dramatic. Ozone and fine particle levels have never been lower. Carbon monoxide and lead levels in the air have pretty much been eliminated. Toxic air pollutants like benzene and acetaldehyde have been cut by over half.

In contrast, LCV's report card tarred Ehrlich with these words:

[Ehrlich's] record on allowing poor air quality to continue and worsen is serious problem that directly affects public health and the environment.

LCV did not back up this statement with any numbers or specifics that I could find.

Their contention of worsening air quality under Ehrlich is dubious because air quality has steadily improved across the US for almost every pollutant in almost every state under almost every governor since the the original Clean Air Act passed 40-odd years ago during Richard Nixon's first term.

The O'Malley report gives numbers only for ozone and particulates. Both improved under Ehrlich between 2002 and 2006.

So if Glendening and O'Malley didn't do any better than Ehrlich in improving the measurable quality of Maryland's air, what exactly did they do to get marks two full letter grades higher than Ehrlich's?

They "supported" certain programs. They "testified" and "pushed" for certain legislation. They provided "outreach and education". They also "promoted" certain technologies--something that governments should stay away from because the results have been so poor.

And what did LVC overlook in granting an A- on Air Quality to Glendening? In the LCV's own words, the Glendening administration

had "cooked the books" on the data in the Baltimore region in order to show compliance with the Clean Air Act.

I don't know what LCV is referring to here--they don't give any details. But what sin in environmental protection is worse than faking the data? How could LCV give an A- to an administration that faked data? LCV gave failing marks to Ehrlich in Baltimore City for shutting down a few ozone monitoring stations. But for faking data, Glendening got a free pass and an A-.

But wait, there's more.

LCV trashed Ehrlich on asthma:

Maryland's Department of Health issued a report in 2003 that concluded air pollution has created a growing epidemic of asthma in the state. In that year alone, there were 32,000 emergency room visits, 8,000 hospitalizations, and 88 deaths reported due to asthma--nearly double the amounts reported in 1980. As a result of the Ehrlich administration's failure to aggressively address these air pollution problems, more than 80 percent of Marylanders are forced to contend with ozone and smog levels higher than the federal air standards deemed to be healthy.

To recap, Governor Ehrlich published a report during his second year in office that identified a serious problem. After only two years in office, LCV gave him a low grade for not fixing this problem which had been growing under Democratic administrations for 20+ years. One of two pollutants linked to asthma by LCV (ozone) actually improved during Ehrlich's term of office: 10% better for the 1-hour standard and 11% better for the 8-hour standards*.

And what did LCV say about asthma in report cards for Glendening and O'Malley?

Nothing in 1997 for Glendening. Nothing in 2001 for Glendening. This is somewhat understandable because it seems to have been Ehrlich who did the heavy lifting that uncovered the problem, after Glendening left office. But what did LCV say about O'Malley's record on asthma--the asthma "epidemic" that was such a serious problem under Ehrlich ?

Nothing.

Cindy Schwartz and Frederick Hoover are you listening?


*Numbers estimated from graphs in O'Malley administration report.

Scrutinizing Maryland LCV's environmental scorecards

In my previous post I listed a decade's worth of environmental grades for the gubernatorial administrations of Parris Glendening, Bob Ehrlich and Martin O'Malley.

It seems to me that LCV's scorecards have focused far too much on intentions and far too little on results. It also seems to me that LCV is unfairly biased against those who are inclined to favor small government.

In some upcoming posts, I plan to scrutinize LCV's scorecards to see if I'm on target.

Maryland LCV grades on environment for Governors Glendening, Ehrlich and O'Malley

Since the late 1990s, the Maryland League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has issued scorecards that grade the environmental records of Maryland's governors. Below, I've graphed the grades over time across three administrations:

Overall Environmental Grades
-------------------------------
97 ]]]]]]]]] B (Glendening/DEM)
01 ]]]]]]]]]] B+ (Glendening/DEM)
04 ]]] D+ (Ehrlich/GOP)
06 ]] D (Ehrlich/GOP)
08 ]]]]]]]]]]] A- (O'Malley/DEM)

Air Quality Grade
------------------
97 ]]]]]]]]]]]] A (Glendening/DEM)
01 ]]]]]]]]]]] A- (Glendening/DEM)
04 ]]]]] C- (Ehrlich/GOP)
06 ]]]]]]C (Ehrlich/GOP)
08 ]]]]]]]]]]] A (O'Malley/DEM)

Water Quality Grade
---------------------
97 ]]]]]]]] B- (Glendening/DEM)
01 ]]]]]]]]]] B+ (Glendening/DEM)
04 ]]]]]]]]] B (Ehrlich/DEM)*
06 ]]]] D+ (Ehrlich/GOP
08 ]]]]]]]]]]]] A (O'Malley/DEM)

To see the individual scorecards, follow these links:
Glendening 1997, Glendening 2001, Ehrlich 2004, Ehrlich 2006, O'Malley 2008.


*This grade was given shortly after the Bay Restoration Fund, aka the "Flush Tax," was enacted.

NOTE: In addition to air quality and water quality, the LCV scorecards give grades for a handful of other subcategories: Administration & Appointments, Climate Change, Energy, Fisheries & Wildlife, Smart Growth, and Transportation).

Ehrlich supporters massively outnumber O'Malley fans at Towson 4th of July parade

When Martin O'Malley took his first steps at the beginning of the July 4th parade in Towson today, the crowd was mostly quiet.

An hour or so later, the crowd welcomed Bob Ehrlich with smiles, noisy applause and cheers. Parade-watchers stopped him often to have pictures taken with him. His reception seemed to match the one he got in Dundalk earlier in the day:

People all along the parade route were holding and waving Ehrlich signs. At one spot on Liberty Parkway, a dozen people were waving signs and chanting “Bob, Bob, Bob.”

...

But O’Malley signs were rare, and his supporters mostly quiet except for a few boos they gave Ehrlich at the Shipping Place shopping center.

Ehrlich signs in Towson outnumbered O'Malley signs by a huge margin -- perhaps 100 to 1 or more. The bumper stickers handed out by Ehrlich volunteers* went fast too, including plenty of the ones that said "Another Democrat for Ehrlich."

If these Baltimore-area parades are any indication, O'Malley is in for a long uphill slog of a gubernatorial campaign.

More bad news for O'Malley:

O’Malley’s day may not have started out on the best note. Before the parade got underway, his aides were reading a Washington Post editorial that blasted his radio ads against Ehrlich, calling them “distortions” and “low-brow name-calling.” The Baltimore Sun had already criticized the ads.

*Including yours truly

The most knowledgable, experienced and insightful folks are often the most up-front about what they don't know

Bay Journal editor Karl Blankenship (who just joined the blogosphere) is one example :

Possibly the most untrue things said about the Bay are any of the variants of the phase, "We don't need any more research. We know what needs to be done to restore the Bay, we just have to do it."

I sometimes tell people that I spent the first 10 years with the Bay Journal learning about the Chesapeake. I spent the next 10 years learning how little I know about the Chesapeake.

The Bay is a magnificently complex system, and every time I start to get cocky and think I understand it, something comes along to humble my pretensions toward higher intelligence.

Gary Jones, the long-time grass farmer and veteran blogger, also comes to mind:

I've often said that everything that I know is wrong, I just don't know how it is wrong or what is right. It's why fallibilist philosophies and heuristically diverse problem solving groups appeal to me, and why experts, intellectuals and other sorts of immodest posers seem so ludicrous. Their self-esteem is proof of ignorance and stupidity.

UPDATE: Somewhat related: Gary on the difference between intelligence and glibness.

Gender-based affirmative action in science & engineering education

It would appear that science and engineering schools have been trying fairly hard to boost the percentage of women in their programs.

The politically correct take on the gender imbalance in science & technology programs seems to be that it's just a failure of marketing:

“The way engineering traditionally has been marketed doesn’t appeal as much to women as to men,” said Carrie-Ann Miller, director of the Women in Science and Engineering program at Stony Brook University

This whole issue seems like small potatoes at first glance. But could gender-based affirmative action in science & technology education (and employment) have unintended consequences? An Instapundit commenter writes:

I work for a very large high tech company. I presently manage a research team in the corporate lab. The problem is that there is no encouragement for American non-minority males to go into science and engineering because we will almost never hire them. Instead we are being forced to look for technical females and under-represented minorities. Since very few American females choose engineering, we end up hiring Chinese and Indian women. The universities that I work with tell me that they find it almost impossible to recruit American males to PhD programs. I believe within less than a generation we will be in deep trouble, technically, in this country, and we’ll be without the means and capability to maintain the highly sophisticated civilization that we’ve constructed.

Del. Mike Smigiel critiques Maryland LCV's scorecard

Some highlights:

He wonders what an early voting bill has to do with the environment:

three years ago, in the 2005 – 2006 “scorecard” the League rated legislators on whether they were good or bad environmentalist based on how they voted on the “early voting bill” (SB-478) and a second score was given on whether the legislators voted to over ride the Governor’s veto on the “early voting bill”. . . . it is no accident that these two votes, which have nothing to do with the environment, were rated as pro environmental votes to make sure Republicans got at least two more bad votes on the environment than their Democratic counterparts.

He goes on to note another bias in LCV's scorecard that is less obvious but no less egregious:

the League of Conservation Voters does something inexplicable that usually will help Democrats and hurt Republicans. The League of Conservation Voters is only counting the first vote on bills and not the later vote on the same bill, after amendments, which is passed and then sent to the governor for his signature, where it then becomes law. It would seem if your intent is tell the public where a legislator is on the environment it would be better to tell them where he or she ended up and not where they started out. It is much more likely that Democrats would vote for a bill that is full of what Republicans may consider to be excessive regulations or taxes when it is first introduced. It is usually after a public hearing and an opportunity to amend bills in committee and on the floor that Republicans would come on board and find that the bill, having gone through compromise, is now acceptable.

"How to Think About Oil Spills"

Stephen Hayward gathers relevant facts:

Over the last 50 years, offshore drilling spills, including the Deepwater Horizon, have unleashed a little more than 1 million tons of oil; tanker accidents have spilled 4 million. For every offshore drilling spill, there have been seven tanker spills, many much larger than the Exxon Valdez, only the 40th largest tanker spill on record.

He writes without hysteria and points to relevant studies

The ecological effects of the Ixtoc 1 disaster should be borne in mind when we hear claims that the Deepwater spill will inflict large and long-lasting effects. According to a 1981 study by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, about half of the Ixtoc 1 oil evaporated, and another 25 percent sank to the bottom of the ocean, much of it broken up by wave action and chemical dispersants.

...

A recent study of seven basic ecosystem types, and their most typical perturbations, found that of ecosystems that make a recovery from various catastrophic events (and, it must be noted, not all do), ocean ecosystems disrupted by oil spills were the fastest to recover, often within a span of one to four years.

He speculates reasonably:

While we still don’t know the precise cause of the failure of the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon (a technology that has successfully prevented spills in more than 150 offshore drilling accidents over the last 40 years), early accounts suggest that the same factors that cause most airplane crashes came into play: complacency and sloppy maintenance.

And he comes to sensible conclusions:

As some environmentalists have come to regret, the limitation of nuclear power after 1979 resulted in the expansion of coal-fired electricity instead, but coal is now environmental enemy number one because of its high greenhouse gas emissions. A halt to offshore drilling now would be equally ill-advised.
...
In short, there is considerable risk that overreaction to the BP/Deepwater spill will have second-order environmental impacts that could be cumulatively worse than the spill itself, both for the Gulf and for other environmental arenas.

Another reason to vote Ehrlich over O'Malley

The mainstream left, which O'Malley personifies, tends to flunk Econ 101.

Partly because their rhetoric on jobs, unemployment, regulation and so tends to fly in the face of basic economic principles.

Even Tom Friedman knows it

"Good jobs...don't come from government."

The gaping chasm on jobs policy between Ehrlich and O'Malley

If this bit from Len Lazarick at MarylandReporter.com isn't a clear and significant difference between Bob Ehrlich and Martin O'Malley, I don't know what is:

Republican Ehrlich favors an approach that calls for government to get out of the way of business, cutting taxes and reducing regulations – or at least making them more consistent and business-friendly.

Democrat O’Malley seeks to show what government has done to foster job and business growth by getting involved. He talks about tax credits, spending on education, cracking down on predatory business practices and overcoming the state’s “pathological modesty” about its positive business environment.

The proper role of government in job creation has only two steps:

1. Make the tax structure and regulatory environment as simple, minimal and predictable as possible while still accomplishing the basic/core/necessary tasks of government.
2. Step aside and let the private sector create the jobs.
   

If you care about the economy, employment and job creation, please vote for Ehrlich. To donate or volunteer for his campaign, go here.

"Higher education's bubble is about to burst"

Glenn Reynolds has an excellent essay up at the Examiner.

The buyers think what they're buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.

Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they're buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn't.

Yes, this sounds like the housing bubble, but I'm afraid it's also sounding a lot like a still-inflating higher education bubble.

...

Things haven't collapsed yet, but they're looking shakier -- kind of like the housing market looked in 2007.

For insights on a possible future in post-bubble academia, Glenn points to a book called DIY U. by Any Kamenetz (4 stars on Amazon):

My question is whether traditional academic institutions will be able to keep up with the times, or whether -- as Anya Kamenetz suggests in her new book, "DIY U" -- the real pioneering will be in online education and the work of "edupunks" who are more interested in finding new ways of teaching and learning than in protecting existing interests.

UPDATE: Another book by Curtis Bonk seems to have a similar message (and gets more stars on Amazon): The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. From an Amazon reviewer:

Bonk shows us that transformative change is coming, and it won't be stopped. He explains that technology, openness, and unprecedented access to knowledge are removing control of the learning process from institutions and placing it into the hands of the individual. This change is nothing short of revolutionary.

A riveting narrative, "The World is Open" will undoubtedly draw comparison to Friedman's seminal work "The World is Flat," but this book is perhaps more important.

Does organic farming have an "enormous carbon footproot"

Gary Jones thinks it does, as do others that he points to:

Organic farming is not the best option from a climate change point of view.
. . .
Farms only represent ~2% of US CO2 emissions but around a third of the anthropogenic methane (a gas which is 21-24 times as potent as a greenhouse gas) and nearly 80% of the anthropogenic nitrous oxide (295-310 times as potent as CO2).
. . .
a major climate change advantage almost universally claimed for Organic (no fossil energy to produce the N), actually represents a carbon footprint that is enormous.

Chris Christie rocks

He gives a clinic on how to forthrightly stand up to teachers' unions. We need more like him in Maryland.

Andrew Breitbart as "Rage Machine": a slanted profile in the New Yorker

Rebecca Mead's article on Andrew Breitbart is unfair and one-sided. She disdains him. Her revulsion can be guessed at just from the title (Rage Machine), but the adjectives she uses remove any doubt.

If you take her text, remove the quotes, remove Breitbart's self-characterizations, and filter out everything else except the descriptive words that Mead herself uses to paint her picture of Breitbart, you find mostly words with overwhelmingly negative connotations. Here's the list:

"hostile"
"psychotic"
"bluster"
"petty"
"seething, sneering voice"
"outbursts"
"brazen, blustering provocation disorientingly couched as a reasoned response"
"cultivated oafishness
"constitutionally adversarial"
"out of line" and
"feverishly cluttered" (his main website)

When I think of Andrew, a very different set of words comes to mind: likable, energetic, clear, blunt, persistent, colorful, engaging, factual, intelligent, fair, articulate, perceptive, and quick.

The few times that Mead uses adjectives with positive connotations, she quickly undercuts them with "buts":

• She describes him as "effective", but it's due to his "rhetoric" and "comic demagoguery" (with the implication that he is fooling or tricking people somehow).
  
• He can be amusing, but "his aesthetic ... [emphasizes] outrage over nuance, and comedy over comprehension"; "his tone [is] exquisitely balanced between humor and menace."
• He's "tall and burly" but has "eyes the color of Windex, silver hair that he sometimes forgets is no longer blond, and jowls that he wobbles for emphasis when he wishes to express outrage."

If you don't count these backhanded compliments, Mead use only two descriptive words in the longish profile that would seem to carry positive connotations for most New Yorker readers: "urbane" and "Jewish."

Jared DeMarinis has a bad idea

Jared is director of "Candidacy and Campaign Finance" for the Maryland State Board of Elections. He and Linda Lamone seem to have plans for regulating the use social networking sites by political campaigns:

A push to pass the new rules in time for the current election cycle could place Maryland among the first in the country to oversee how campaigns use social networking sites. California and Wisconsin are considering similar measures but have faced opposition from groups that fear an infringement on First Amendment rights.

The board is to vote on the rules today, but final approval from a state legislative committee will still be required. DeMarinis says he is fast-tracking the approval process in hopes of getting the rules in place for November.

Maryland does not need more limitations on political speech.

Four books that aren't gloomy enough about "sustainability" to be bestsellers

John Tierney via Muck & Mystery:

Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”? Good books all, and so is the newest addition to this slender canon, “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley.

Governor O'Malley on the Maryland state budget: Pot. ketle

Marta Mossburg reports:

Last week the nonpartisan Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting released Maryland's "Financial State of the State," and the news is not good. It says the state's retirement system is underfunded by $33 billion as a result of overpromising benefits while underfunding obligations. For example, in fiscal 2009 the state set aside $1.3 billion for retirement benefits even though actuaries said a minimum of $2.2 billion should have been deposited.

The result: The state has 49 cents for every dollar promised to state workers. Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, did not create this problem. Underfunding of the pension plan started in 2002, said R. Dean Kenderdine, executive director of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System.

But O'Malley has continued to raid funds dedicated to transportation and cleaning the Chesapeake Bay, issue debt to pay for current projects -- and push massive pension obligations into the future, increasing their cost, at the same time he claims fiscal responsibility.

His sleight of hand to balance the budget shows that he is also living in the financial "fantasy land" that his ads accuse former Gov. Robert Ehrlich of inhabiting.

For a variety of financial reports from the Maryland Comptroller's office from the 1990s to the present day, go here.

New "electronic bill review system" for MD state legislature

Sounds like a good thing. It would also be nice if this system were open to the public.

Crowdsourcing works.

A rarity in Baltimore

Last Sunday, after nearly a decade in Baltimore, I finally saw my first Baltimore Oriole. The feathered kind, icterus galbula, not the human baseball-playing species.

What a gorgeous bird. Smaller than I expected, and sad that there aren't more of them around.

Mrs. BaltoNorth and I saw it during a very pleasant six-hour kayak ride on the Gunpowder Falls. We went from Hereford all the way down to Loch Raven.

[N.B. I didn't take the photo. It's from Wikipedia.]