As the young people say, Jon Stewart FTW.

I like Jon Stewart. If I still had cable, his show is one of the few things I would make time to watch. As it is, several websites I visit have clips of The Daily Show and I watch them several times a week.

Chris Wallace had him on as a guest on Fox News Sunday. As you might imagine, Mr. Wallace did not like the idea that he worked for a "relentless agenda-driven 24 hour news opinion propaganda delivery system". Stewart stood by these words.

Wallace did something a lot of newspeople do, criticized Stewart for not being a serious newsman. Stewart said the comparison was silly, that he is a comedian just as Will Rogers was, and that people take him seriously because they are disappointed in the news they get.

Wallace said Fox News viewers weren't in the least disappointed. Stewart said that poll after poll shows that they are the most consistently misinformed.

In other words, if they were bright enough to be disappointed, they'd be disappointed.

Wallace made the point that other news outlets are biased in the liberal direction. Stewart countered that the actual bias of the news media in general is not ideological, but weaknesses for conflict, sensationalism and laziness.

The Huffington Post had this story as the top of the page early this Sunday. They had a huge picture of Stewart, slightly grainy and looking somewhat upset, with a 48-point headline "YOU'RE INSANE!"

Let's see. Conflict, check. Sensationalism, check. Laziness, check.

I gave Mr. Wallace's quotes first and Mr. Stewart's quotes second because Stewart correctly countered everything Wallace brought up. Jon Stewart is one of my heroes. Chris Wallace is a corporate tool and he got owned on his own show.

Here endeth the lesson.

Too good to be true, as I should have expected.

The Nigerian government has dropped criminal charges against Halliburton and its then overlord Darth Cheney in the case of bribes totaling about $180 million. Instead, the company has settled and will pay a fine that is "supposed" to be undisclosed, but Nigerian officials are saying will be $250 million.

In other words, they paid for a really expensive meal and got left with a mandatory 140% tip.

If I were them, I wouldn't go to that restaurant anymore.

A story on for profit colleges in The New York Times.

I've done some teaching at for profit colleges. That industry is now in the news because Congress is investigating it. I didn't teach at either of these schools for very long and I would have to think long and hard about going back to a for profit school. The pay isn't as good for the instructors and the students are charged much more for an hour of instruction than they are at community colleges. This link to an op-ed column in The New York Times by Jeremy Dehn from Denver, sent to me by my friend Ken Rose. Many of Dehn's experiences are similar to mine and he has seen some things I didn't see and investigated the industry more deeply than I have.




The most telling numbers are that for profit schools have 12% of all students in post-secondary education and those students account for 23% of all the student loans. They are also twice as likely to default on those loans. Admissions policies are as lax as they are at community colleges, but failing at one of these schools is a much more expensive proposition, leaving students with a lot of debt and nothing to show for it.




The part of the equation I wasn't aware of was who invests in the for profit education industry. Dehn brings up that his school, the Art Institute of Colorado, is one third owned by Goldman Sachs. The people with the most skill at gaming the financial systems realize that there are ample methods to milk money away from the government in the form of student loans and into the pockets of Big Finance, spending a short time in the hands of overcharged consumers who will be liable for picking up the tab should anything not go as planned.

I have an in-law I deeply dislike who decided to see if he could convert some of us to the glories of the free market over Thanksgiving dinner a few years back. He told me that private industry could do a much better job of educating people than the state schools currently do, and that I would be a happier and more productive worker in such a system. He was disappointed that my life experience was more convincing than his belief in a libertarian paradise where the profit motive would reward all conscientious workers and only punish the lazy and dishonest.

He doesn't show up to Thanksgiving any more. It's a much more pleasant holiday now.

The tyranny of the minority.

The use of the super-majority vote in special circumstances has a long history and in many cases, the arguments in favor are strong. Overriding a veto, for example, should clearly need more than just a 50% +1 vote, since that was the type of vote that put the bill in the hands of the executive branch in the first place. The idea that the executive branch can sign treaties but the Senate has to ratify them makes sense, and by tradition it must be a two-thirds majority to ratify. We like to say that politics ends at the water's edge, but we know that's a lie. The Senate did not save us from NAFTA or GATT, but did protect the Big Agriculture monopolies and their patented seed protections. Still, we average less than one treaty per year, so this is not the day in, day out business of government.

But in many states, super-majorities are not needed only in rare instances, but at the very core of the business of government, the signing of a budget. The modern Republican party uses middle class taxpayers and the idealized "small business owner" as human shields against raising taxes on corporations and the super wealthy, and basic services used by the vast majority of citizens are starved to near extinction.


As bad as Schwarzenegger and the California Republicans can be, other places can be much, much worse. Tom Emmer is the Republican party candidate for governor of Minnesota, supported by outgoing governor Tim Pawlenty and Alaskan half-term governor Sarah Palin. According to Talking Points Memo, Emmer wants to institute a law in Minnesota that says no Federal law should apply in Minnesota unless it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the state legislature.

I don't much care if these people want to be called the Tea Party or the Teabaggers or the Dirty Sanchez Coalition, if they think this is the solution to the fact that they lost two elections in a row, they should think about what would happen if people they agree with are running Washington and people they disagree with are in power in Minneapolis.


And then we come back to the Golden State. On the June ballot, there is Proposition 16, sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and patriotically called The Taxpayer's Right To Vote Act. The idea is that if any local government wants to enter the retail power market, it would require a two-thirds majority of a popular vote to allow it. PG&E is promising to spend $35 million to get this to pass, while the anti Prop. 16 side hasn't mustered $100,000 yet.

The supporters of Prop. 16 include the usual suspects, the anti-tax group formed by Howard Jarvis all those years ago and the Chamber of Commerce. Just to show the bipartisan nature of scumbaggery here, it is also supported by Willie Brown, the alleged liberal who has never had any interest beyond getting richer.

I ask all my readers who are California voters to go to the polls next month and cast a no vote on Prop. 16. If it mandated a straight up-and-down vote on the formation of local public utilities, I could appreciate arguments both pro and con. But the super-majority vote is just plain wrong, and don't be surprised if the money PG&E shells out trying to pass this dishonest power grab later becomes "justified" rate hikes for California consumers.

He just wants his country back!

"I also know Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety. The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming."

Meet Don Blankenship, just another humble American patriot trying to take his country back. He's the owner of the mine where 29 workers just died. He's also a major financial contributor to the Tea Party and a member in good standing of the Chamber of Commerce who actively promote the idea that there's no such thing as global warming.

Some people might not recognize it, but I actually do try to moderate my voice when I write here. I don't call the people out in the street "teabaggers". They used to call themselves that but they figured out the sexual connotation, so I will use the title they prefer and call them the Tea Party. But seriously, the people who work in the mines have to realize that they do not share common purpose with the scumbags who cut corners and kill their workers.

Scum like Don Blankenship and his ilk have a lot more in common with Jefferson Davis and John Wilkes Booth than they do with Paul Revere and John Hancock. Critics on the right might say that I support class warfare. When this is the other side, I would say the two options are we fight back and there's class warfare, or we don't fight back and it's just class genocide.