Corey Mull's Evil Urges

$1500 a second

CNN:

Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter. That profit works out to $1,485.55 a second. That barely beat the previous corporate record of $11.66 billion, also set by Exxon in the fourth quarter of 2007.

I don't begrudge companies massive profits, especially when they are selling a product that is vital for the global economy. And I think that windfall profits taxes, as they are posited by most progressives and populists, are little more than punitive reactions to profits seen as "unfair" (hint: there is no fair or unfair in economics). The one windfall profits tax that I do like is one that gives companies a choice: either reinvest the tax total in R&D on non-petroleum fuels, or the government will do it for you.

Kaine for VP

Speculation has raged for the past two days about Tim Kaine, current Governor of Virginia, as being very high on Barack Obama's shortlist for vice president. As a Richmond native (Kaine was once a city councilman and mayor there) and proud Virginian, let me say this: I want this guy to be the vice presidential nominee.

Don't get me wrong - I do not think his term as governor has been successful. Transportation, the biggest issue facing half of the state's population in the DC burbs and Hampton Roads, has been a bust - no meaningful changes have been made during Kaine's term. This is mostly the fault of an unprecedentedly childish Republican caucus in the state legislature, but still, as a leader he has to shoulder some of the responsibility. More stunningly, on the environmental front, Kaine controversially reversed a state board's rejection of Dominion Virginia Power's application to build a coal-fired power plant in Wise County, rather than encourage the utility to build a more environmentally suitable plant. The Wise fiasco was such a turnoff to local liberals that the popular blog Raising Kaine changed its name to simply RK.

So he's not a progressive. Neither is Obama. But I like him, and I'll be honest, it is 100% identity politics at work. He's a Richmonder, I'm a Richmonder. He's Catholic, I'm Catholic. I lived in the guy's city council district.

Let's face it - Obama's not going to pick a Russ Feingold to be veep. Absent that, everyone else is mediocre-to-bad on policy. So I'll happily support a VP pick based on who I'd rather have a beer with.

Random liberal blogger sentence, Vol. 1

Chris Hayes, at TPM Cafe:

And indeed the disagreements between radicals and liberals, for instance, are, while sometimes unpleasant, part of a larger dialectical process that is both inevitable and salutary.

I'm pretty sure 50% of the letters could be removed from that sentence and it would still retain its full meaning. Note to liberal bloggers: big words and awkward sentence structures don't make you sound smart! You do this for a living, people!

Great News

Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) was indicted yesterday on a litany of corruption charges. This, of course, is great news for Republicans and John McCain.

K-Lo:

...I actually think it it could be a cleansing opportunity if he would resign already. (It would help if Don Young would follow him — what's the matter with Alaska?) And rhetorically, McCain could use it even if he's been in the Senate forever, because reform has been his post-Keating Five life.

Jonathan Martin:

Ted Stevens, the long-serving senator from Alaska and former chairman of the powerful Appropriatons Committee, is to be indicted today on seven criminal counts.

No word yet from McCain or the campaign, but I'd be shocked if they didn't at least subtly remind voters about the clashes between the two senators over the years.

McCain often likes to brag that Stevens had once deemed him, "The Sheriff," for his crusading ways.

The two served together on the Commerce committee and have battled frequently over pork -- despised by McCain and beloved by Stevens...

All this goes to show that quite literally no news is bad news for John McCain and company. Yep, it's all sunshine and Care Bears in Crystal City.

 

#6

My alma mater was in national news today for about the third time in the past six years. The first time, a dude got sniped at the Ponderosa down the street. The second time, a player from an opposing basketball team sank a nasty, desperate hookshot from the baseline at the buzzer to win the game - a feat that was featured as plays #9, 7, 5, 3, and 1 on SportsCenter's Top Ten Plays. And finally, today, little old Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA was named the #6 party school in the nation by Princeton Review - a ranking I found rather odd given my time there. Suffice it to say that at R-MC there are two choices as far as parties on any weekend night - Frat House #1 and Frat House #2, and neither of them are really that cool. And I'm not being some elitist asshole when I say that - I like a good old fashioned rager as much as the next guy - but these were run-of-the-mill frat parties, like something you'd see on a Tuesday at any real college.

I have a theory about small liberal arts colleges like Randolph-Macon - they're dying. Sure, the big-name ones aren't - the world will never be without Reed, or Williams, or Wesleyan, or Sarah Lawrence. But the ones like Macon, without a big name and largely serving local communities, are dying a slow death.

The theory goes like this: social media has linked people with wildly diverse interests together and encouraged others to hold those same interests. Because of this, the range of interests of the average person has exploded in the past 10 years. So, for instance, a rock fan 10 years ago might've liked Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, while today he's just as likely to be a fan of The Flying Whatsits from Spokane just because someone linked him to their MySpace.

Given that expansion of interests, I think there's a big change going on in American collegiate choices - students are choosing a) big schools over small and b) quirky, intellectual schools over more conventional ones. I think, to a degree, this has always been the case among students with diverse interests and passions - the only difference is, given new technologies, there are more of these kinds of students than ever before.

So what does this mean? It means that schools like Macon will, in the future, be relegated to taking what's left of young people - those without a lot of intellectual curiosity or a wide range of interests. Faculty recruiting will suffer, because who wants to teach a bunch of kids who don't care about the subject and are just there for a grade? Donations will suffer as alumni perceive their school going down the drain, and the cycle repeats itself.

How to fix this?

• Expand the student body to 3k-5k - enough to create a self-sustaining artistic and intellectual community on campus - a pre-creative class, you might say. Randolph-Macon, for reference, had 1100 students when I attended, and the pre-creative class consisted of a cadre of maybe 40 students who were nearly 100% isolated from the rest of the school.
• Establish an economic partnership with localities to incentivize student-oriented business development. In the case of Ashland, the town has made some pretenses toward doing this (such as painting college logos on the road going through campus) but no true development has been done: a movie theater sits vacant across the street from campus and there are plenty of properties available for retail and restaurants within walking distance that remain empty. An increase in the student population would help spur this; economic and tax incentives along the lines of enterprise zones are needed too. College towns do a huge amount to sell a college to potential students, and the more things there are to do, the better the student body.
• Remove residency requirements after freshman year. Unrestricted off-campus living means two things: first, increased property values around campus, leading to bigger tax revenues which could fund the incentives mentioned in bullet #2; and second, a grouping of like-minded students into residential units. More houses means more house parties, and more choices means better choices. Off-campus living means better parties - bringing me fully back to the genesis of this post.

Even though I didn't really enjoy myself at Macon, it kind of makes me sad to see what was once one of the premier academic institutions in the South simply become the nation's #6 party school. It also pisses me off because in my mind, that reduces the value of my degree. I think we can all agree that something needs to be done.

Zimmerman's Foibles

The Nats' game was a lot of fun, and all the bloggers kicked ass. I saw the Nationals commit at least three errors that I honestly learned to avoid in Little League. Despite that, it was a relatively close game.

I've got some posts to put up but fuck it, I'm going to bed. 7 AM is coming soon.

Nats game tonight

Going to a Nationals game tonight with Christmas Ape from Kissing Suzy Kolber, Frank from Somewhat Frank, and Justin from MetaEfficient, as well as some others. The Nats are so terrible that I'm sure the game won't be much of a distraction from the networking.

Mark Penn's "active granny" vote

Words fail me. Mark Penn, in today's Politico:

In the relentless quest to find the soccer moms of this election, perhaps the answer will be found in the “active granny” vote...

Smell that? That's a guy who absolutely, positively cannot admit when he's wrong.

P.S. Microtrends sucked.

Surprise surprise...

Apparently, and who could have guessed this, increasing teenage girls' access to birth control results in fewer pregnancies. And all this time I thought teenagers wanted to get pregnant!

Tim Fernholz at Tapped:

Here's a sobering fact: 30 percent of teenage girls in the U.S. become pregnant. But Brookings researchers report that providing contraception through Medicaid is a cost-effective policy option that reduces unplanned pregnancies. While this might seem like a no-brainer, the report notes that there was concern that women were insufficiently committed to family planning and might not take advantage of available contraception options. Apparently, that isn't the case: providing this option reduces unplanned pregnancies by 15 percent.

The study can be found here.

Here's a true test of pro-life fanatics. If they're actually concerned about the number of abortions performed in the United States, they'll greet this news with open arms: finally, a fool-proof way to reduce teenage pregnancies and abortions!

Do not, however, hold your breath for this. Their concern isn't about aborted babies, it's about controlling sexuality. In their weird, twisted world, the free availability of birth control and abortion is not an escape valve for those in trouble, but rather a license for promiscuity - which is the real threat. Abortions are just incidental.

Rewarding Blue Dogs

As usual, Glenn Greenwald is spot on. Quoting at length:

Earlier this month, Rasmussen Reports announced the humiliating finding that "the percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits [9 percent] for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history." That extremely negative view of Congress cuts across partisan and ideological lines, as only small percentages of Democrats (13 percent), Republicans (8 percent) and independents (3 percent) believe that Congress is doing an "excellent" or even a "good" job. Perhaps most remarkable, some polls -- such as one from Fox News last month -- reveal that the Democratic-led Congress is actually more unpopular among Democrats than among Republicans, with 23 percent of Republicans approving of Congress compared with only 18 percent of Democrats. One would be hard-pressed to find a time in modern American history, if such a time exists at all, when a Congress was more unpopular among the party that controls it than among voters from the opposition party.

That a Democratic Congress is so deeply unpopular even among Democrats may be historically unusual, but it is hardly surprising or difficult to understand. On key issue after key issue, it is the Bush White House and Republican caucus that have received virtually everything they wanted from Congress, while the base of the Democratic Party has received virtually nothing other than disappointment and an overt repudiation of its agenda. Since the American people gave them control of Congress, the Democrats in Congress have given the country the following:

Unlimited and unconditional funding for the Iraq war. Vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and retroactive amnesty for their telecom donors -- measures the administration tried, but failed, to obtain from the GOP Congress. The ability to ignore congressional subpoenas with utter impunity. A resolution formally decreeing parts of the Iranian government to be a "terrorist organization." A failure to outlaw waterboarding, to apply the torture ban to the CIA, to restore the habeas corpus rights abolished by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, to impose the requirement of congressional approval before President Bush can attack Iran. Confirmation of highly controversial Bush nominees, including Michael Mukasey as attorney general even after he embraced the most radical Bush theories of executive power and repeatedly refused to say that waterboarding was torture....

Democratic leaders must learn that they cannot increase their majority in Congress by trampling on the political values of their own base. It's crucial that they understand that they will not gain seats, but will lose seats, the more they accommodate the right's agenda. That, in turn, will happen only if progressives target for defeat selected members of the Democratic caucus who are responsible for that right-wing-enabling behavior. That is the only way to eliminate the incentive for the Democratic leadership to continue to follow the strategy of increasing their own power by mimicking Republicans. Those who disagree with that -- who object that it is oh-so-terrible to cause the defeat of any Democratic incumbents, no matter how complicit and irrelevant -- have the responsibility to identify what alternative strategy they think should be pursued in order to alter the behavior of the Democratic Party in Congress.

Responses here and here.

My take: conservatives have run campaigns for years attacking the "moral relativism" of Democrats and liberals on all sorts of "controversial" issues like gay marriage. But it's a classic projection: mainstay positions of the Right rely on the false idea that verifiable facts can and and should be filtered through the lens of opinion: in other words, the idea that facts are relative. This is where we get "controversies" about evolution and global warming. This kind of thinking has filtered up to the news media, which feels obligated to present "both sides" of every story, regardless of the factual and/or scientific merit of the positions presented.

What's going on with Democratic leaders is just another symptom of the same disease. Bedrock political non-negotiables like the law and the Constitution are roundly ignored in favor of the two-sides frame. That way, Constitutional catastrophes like long-term warrantless wiretapping, which is objectively a violation of existing law and the Constitutional right to privacy, become simply another left-right issue where no one is right and no one is wrong. Under that frame, there is no accountability for those who violate the law and those who enable the violations - simply political ground to be gained or lost.

Greenwald's point is that given this ridiculous state of affairs, progressives and others invested in civil liberties must play the political game and not offer blind support to Democratic politicians, and above all, must not shy away from vocally criticizing those who hold positions outside the law and Constitution, even to the extent of funding primary challengers against them. It's an idea I fully support.