Rep. Peter Hoekstra Twitters A Security Breach

I'm a big fan of Twitter. Many state and federal lawmakers love it, too and I like to follow their day-to-day business.

However, there are some new rules to observe in this "New Media" world. Representative Peter Hoekstra is finding that out after "twittering" about his top secret trip to Iraq.

That's not only a security breach, but Representative Hoekstra also has to accept the fact that he's going to be the target of some extra-snarky media pieces by reporters who knew about the trip but kept it secret.

Ah....Spring (Training, That Is)

Pitchers and catchers don't report until February 13th, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch begins spring training coverage of my beloved Cardinals this Monday.

I am shivering with (the extreme cold of a bad winter) anticipation!

The making of Barbie

You will like this.

And I thought it would be fun to link it just after Jeff's last post.

"The Meaning Of Sarah Palin"

Some columnists hated her, some loved her. Yuval Levin finally attempts a balanced view of the Sarah Palin candidacy and nails it.

So why did it happen? What was the Palin episode really about? The answer has much to do with the age-old tension between populism and elitism in our public life, which is to say, between the notion that we are best governed by the views, needs, and interests of the many and the conviction that power can only be managed wisely by a select few.

More Ballots Found In Coleman Vs. Franken Race

Wow. They are still finding more uncounted ballots in the Coleman/Franken US Senate race in Minnesota.

If all races were subjected to this type of scrutiny, one wonders how many uncounted votes would be found.

The President's Inexperience

"Okay!" said a friend of mine. "Take off your partisan blinders and just give me non-partisan analysis of what's going on!"

Challenge accepted.

Scurrilous charges abound in a campaign. But there were two points made by John McCain in the last campaign that were truisms about Barack Obama: 1) He lacks experience and 2) He has never stood up to leaders in his own party.

As CNN reports, both points are burning him right now.

So how does he turn things around on the stimulus package?

Simple. He's the one with the 68% approval rating. I believe President Obama, due to a lack of experience, ceded the crafting of the package to Congressional leaders who have the approval ratings of stinky cheese.

It's been reported that the President told GOP legislators who voiced objections over the package that he "won." He should say the same to leaders of his own party. Cut the package back to tax reductions, infrastructure investments, and alternative energy ideas. Drop the corporate welfare and pork.

Oh, and those mayors who went to Washington to lobby FOR this monstrosity? It's no wonder people have never felt so out-of-touch with their governmental leaders.

Gmail goes old-school with stickers!

Get your free Gmail stickers here. If you're a big Gmail fan, as Jeff and I are, but you also remember the good old days of paper and notebooks and trading stickers with friends, these are for you. I am so totally stealing Jeff's unicorn one.

Your request (snail-mail only) has to be postmarked by February 14.

The Problem With The Stimulus

President Obama responds to Republican calls for more tax cuts in the stimulus with the now familiar refrain of "I won in November." But he can't ignore this: public support for the stimulus package is plummeting. Charles Krauthammer believes that Obama is being more hurt by
his support of the bill than by the controversy over his appointments.

That's because Congressional Democrats see the bill as a vehicle for unrestrained spending. The American people are smart--and as more details of the package are reported, they see a lot of pork and very little stimulus.

Trying to revive support for the measure, Obama sounds a populist note by trying to limit executive salaries. But Ana Marie Cox--founder of Wonkette--twittered this morning: "I'm not a conservative but I think if I was this whole capping-salaries-government-will-run-failing businesses would be freaking my s**t out."

Furloughs are the new black

The big trend in state government these days is the unpaid furlough. Here's what California's doing (two unpaid Fridays off each month--ouch!), and here's a link to the Iowa Judicial Branch's furlough notice. The rumor is that there may be more beyond the February 16th court closure day...and the cuts include other measures, like delaying trials and making litigants go to judges in the judges' home counties, rather than paying for judges' travel.

At least it's not layoffs.

Privatizing Social Security? No thanks, says Eliot Spitzer

Slate has a good piece today by Eliot Spitzer (yes, that Eliot Spitzer) suggesting that it's now time to kill off the goofy idea of privatizing Social Security. Here's the gist of it:

Since Jan. 1, 2000, the Dow has dropped from 11,497 to 8,000, a drop of more than 30 percent. So what would this have meant to an average recipient of Social Security?

Let's try to quantify this, albeit roughly. Under the current system, a couple earning a household income of $100,000-$150,000 per year would get slightly more than $3,000 every month in Social Security benefits. And their benefits would be inflation-adjusted every year. Suppose the couple were to invest for retirement in the private markets. With an income of that size, the couple would be able to save about $500,000. As Allan Sloan calculated in Fortune, a couple retiring at age 66 at the end of 2007, having accumulated $500,000 in a private savings account, would have been able to purchase an annuity delivering $3,000 per month until the death of the longest living of the two. In other words, that couple would get an annuity worth about the same amount as their Social Security benefits. A couple retiring at the end of 2008, by contrast, would have been able to purchase an annuity delivering only $2,000 per month—a 33 percent loss.

In other words, if Social Security were in private accounts, the payout you'd receive would be more correlated to the timing of your retirement than to anything else. With a privatized system, those retiring in 2007 would have been reasonably pleased—though they still wouldn't have made a windfall compared with normal Social Security benefits—while those retiring now would be devastated, receiving vastly smaller retirement payments.
...
Social Security is, as we all know, a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. Today's contributions by workers pay for today's payouts to recipients, with some being saved in a trust fund that, given changing demographics, will be exhausted several decades from now. If we were to create private accounts for current contributions, invest those accounts in the market, and thus withhold those dollars from the system for current payouts, the shock to the system would be enormous. Where would the money come from to pay current recipients? We would incur a "transition cost" to privatization, as it is politely called, in the trillions of dollars—money that would have to be borrowed in the market to cover the lost cash flow into the Social Security system.

And that fact makes clear the fallacy of the next argument often proffered by privatization supporters: They claim that the flow of dollars into the private accounts and then into the equity markets will stimulate the economy. The problem is that for every dollar put into the market through a private account, the government would have to borrow a dollar in the market to cover existing payouts. Thus the supposed benefit is entirely eliminated, as the net impact on the capital available for investment is zero.

It's a good article. Looks like Eliot Spitzer's working on his comeback.

Early retirement for Sasha and Malia

You can't buy Ty's Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia anymore...they are retired. So if your little politically savvy 6-year-old is longing to play with the First Children, you're going to be paying top dollar on eBay. (They are already well over $100.)

While I can't even imagine how it might feel to know that your daughters have been the models for stuffed toys (and therefore can't relate to the Obamas' outrage about these dolls), I have always been a fan of dolls like Ty's...or the even cooler Groovy Girls dolls. They are the anti-Barbies...with normal body shapes and girlish clothes and hairstyles (though some moms might freak out at the outlandish hair colors and oversized feet). It's all better than the horrible images girls are being fed by publications like Teen Vogue.

Tara's awesome commuter rail line

Todd Dorman's post today about rail service in Iowa got me thinking again about one of my favorite imaginary projects, the Central Iowa Light Rail Corridor. I invented it.

It goes from the area around South Dayton Avenue in Ames (near Highway 30) down to Ankeny (with a possible stop near DMACC), then on to the Iowa Capitol/East Village area. It then heads west through downtown Des Moines, with a split around the new public library. The south spur goes to the Des Moines airport, while the west spur continues along I-235 with stops on the way out to West Des Moines. The western terminus is around Jordan Creek.

What do you all think? Would people ride it? Which stages of it would make sense to build first?

When I lived in the Twin Cities, people were passionately polarized about light rail. However, it worked...so well that ridership has surpassed expectations.