Ruth Holladay has a column entitled Truth comes out about professor’s background. Professor William C. Bradford resigned after being revealed as a fraud. Apparently he had promoted himself as a war veteran and Silver Star recipient. He was neither. He held himself out as a conservative persecuted by the liberal elites of academia because fellow professors voted against Bradford receiving tenure. Sometimes it’s not your politics or philosophy. Sometimes it’s just you. Good riddance.

Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog has a post entitled The Indiana Law Blog: Ind. Gov’t. – More on cities offering broadband to their residents. This is a recurring issue around the country. I heard about it first in Philadelphia. Indiana has had some legislation dealing with the subject. Now, according to the story linked at ILB, New Orleans is catching some heat from Bell South over its plans to deploy a city-wide wireless broadband “for free” (tax supported, obviously) to its citizens. In a nice public relations move:

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth’s Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city.

ILB has covered the issue on several other occasions, including here and here.

Senator Ford’s SB 381-2005 sought to address the government provided broadband issue. I don’t think it passed in any form, but back on 2/28/05, I described it this way:

This bill essentially does two things – it sets up a coordinating body to determine the feasibility of implementing a statewide broadband system that would be used by political subdivisions, schools and colleges, state & local police and emergency management agencies, and community networks, as well as local or publicly funded hospitals and certified technology parks. Extra capacity could be sold to anyone else at cost, subject to certain priorities. The second thing it does is set up a Indiana Broadband Development Program which will first inquire to determine which areas are underserved. If there is no broadband service within 3 months of the inquiry, the area is underserved. An organization in an underserved area can get the Development Program to borrow money on its behalf for the purpose of providing broadband service.

I suspected opposition at that time because: “the telecommunication companies don’t like this bill because it could take away potentially lucrative government contracts and doesn’t allow them an indefinite period in which to cherry-pick the potentially profitable broadband areas.” As a policy matter I think government provided broadband is a great idea. I’m generally a limited government kind of guy, but for infrastructure, I tend to support a strong government presence. I started thinking this way when I first heard about Henry Clay and his “American System.” Government development of infrastructure almost always seems to yield dividends for the public. (Public highways seem to be better for economic development than toll roads.) So, I see a public broadband system as a relatively cheap way for the government to improve its economic base. Sure, it will cost folks like Bell South some money, but I’m not going to cry a river for a company that got to where it is through a government imposed monopoly.

Leo Morris has a post entitled Opening Arguments: Yes, they are evil that underscores the lack of thought that got us into the Iraqi debacle. It’s short, so I’ll post the whole thing:

I think I’ll start handing out the Kurt Vonnegut Award (the Kurt) to the people who are the least serious about the war against Islamofascism. Today’s winner, media division, goes to Chris Matthews, who thinks, among other things,

If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we’ve given up. The person on the other side is not evil. They just have a different perspective. The smartest people understand the enemy’s point of view, because they understand what’s driving them.

I understand that our enemies want to kill us. I think it would be a pretty good idea if we killed them first.

This sounds good, but the generalizations “our enemies” and “them” tend to hide the fact that we don’t know who we’re fighting. Islamofascists? The Islamo part I understand: ‘Muslims’. Easy enough, but used in conjunction with fascism, I don’t comprehend. Merriam-Webster defines fascism as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” So, aside from the general connotation of “bad people,” I don’t know how fascism works into this.

Matthews point in the quoted material is that we didn’t spend enough time during the period between 9/11 and the Iraq War trying to figure out who it was we ought to be fighting and why they hated us. That was part of the reason we ended up invading a secular Iraqi dictatorship in response to an attack perpetrated upon us by religious fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. If we didn’t have anything to fear from Iraqi Islamic fundamentalists before we invaded, we do now — and we still have al Qaeda and its supporters to worry about. More so than before, in fact, since we opened up Iraq as a place for them to operate.

Our lack of understanding and precise identification of “our enemies” leads to mistakes where we end up torturing and killing Afghan taxi drivers, for example. This is the kind of action that adds to the number of “our enemies,” with the end result that we are less safe, not more. Occupying Iraq has had the same result.

Probably the most important reason why we shouldn’t be so dismissive of the idea of understanding why individuals want to kill us is that we’re giving up on half of the opportunity to neutralize them. If someone has the desire to kill you, there are essentially two opportunities to stop them: take away their ability and take away their desire. Mr. Morris would have us abandon half of the equation. If you are standing in a swamp full of alligators, you can kill the alligators and you can drain the swamp. Draining the swamp is the best long term solution. By invading Iraq, we killed a spider and expanded the size of the swamp.

For those of you interested in Indiana’s tax and budget situation, a national perspective may be of interest. The New York Times has an article entitled States’ Coffers Swelling Again After Struggles. Most states are seeing an increase in tax revenue after 4 years or so of lean times. The article mentions the Great Lakes states as not necessarily sharing in the bounty on account of the significant loss in manufacturing jobs. It also mentions the Gulf states which were set to do pretty well, largely on the strength of oil royalties, until the hurricanes came.

All is not roses even for the states getting a good deal of extra income. The article likens those states to the guy who has been out of work for a while. Sure, he has his job back, and that’s good. But, while he was unemployed, he ran up his credit cards and dipped into his retirement to pay for his kid’s rising tuition. So, it will take awhile to get back to even, let alone pull ahead.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Indiana page of Congressional races. It doesn’t list challengers for Democratic incumbents Pete Visclosky in District 1 or Julia Carson in District 7. However, challenging Republican incumbents:

District 2, challenging Chris Chocola is Joe Donnelly.

District 3, challenging Mark Souder are Tom Hayhurst and Michael Clements.

District 4, challenging Steve Buyer is Richard Cornstuble.

District 5, nobody is challenging Dan Burton.

District 6, challenging Mike Pence is Barry Welsh.

District 8, challenging John Hostettler is Brad Ellsworth.

District 9, challenging Mike Sodrel are Baron Hill and Gretchen Clearwater.

As I mentioned yesterday, in the United States House of Representative, Democratic hawk John Murtha offered a resolution that had 3 components:
1. Withdraw the troops as soon as is practicle;
2. Keep a reserve force that is out of Iraq but is nearby that can get to Iraq quickly if need be.
3. Continue seeking to stabilize Iraq through diplomacy and other non-military means.

The Republicans responded by forcing an amendment to the resolution that turned it into a cartoonish caricature of itself: requiring the immediate withdrawal of troops, whether it’s safe or practical or not; and stripping the part about reserve forces or further diplomacy. With that alteration made, any serious discussion of what to do in Iraq in the House was effectively terminated.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article entitled Iraq withdrawal demands just politics, Souder says.

Souder, who overcame reluctance in 2002 to vote for the war resolution, said it is not true that Congress was misled about whether Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

“Nobody told us . . . there was a 100 percent chance. The ranges were 30 percent to 70 (percent),” he said. “The data wasn’t manipulated.”

Pence agreed that the prewar information “was always qualified. It was never a pronouncement that any of the facts were categorically established.”

Souder said much of what was suspected to be in Iraq – parts, scientists and buildings – was, in fact, found. “What we didn’t find was weapons prepared to launch. The final form, I believe, was 30 percent that we were going to find that. We all full well knew it, and I’m tired of people lying about it,” he said. “The criticism of this intelligence on war is all politics. It has nothing to do with facts. It is all politics, and I am sick of it.”

O.k., there are at least two aspects to this: 1) Criticism of how the pre-war intelligence was presented to the public; and 2) what do we do with Iraq now that we’re there. Souder seems to be wrong about how the pre-war intelligence was presented and simply ignoring the question of what to do with Iraq now.

Representative Murtha presented a plan: Get the troops out as quickly as can be done safely; keep a reserve out of Iraq, but available to respond quickly if need be; and pursue stability through non-military means. Maybe that’s not the best plan — it sounds like a decent one to me, but as a matter of policy, I’m happy to say I’m not positive that’s the best way to go. Souder and the Republicans didn’t respond by offering a good faith alternative; offering some way of dealing with the mess. Souder just waves his hands and dismisses it as “just politics.” As I said before, our soldiers are dying, our treasury is looted, and we aren’t any better off than we were before the invasion. Murtha offers a plan, and the Republicans turn it into a strawman they can vote against. And Souder says Murtha is just playing politics.

As for the pre-war intelligence — I’m stunned to hear this 30% language. As readers may suspect, I keep reasonably up to date on current affairs, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard 30%.

Let’s take a look at part of that Pence quote again. Mike Pence:

the prewar information “was always qualified. It was never a pronouncement that any of the facts were categorically established.”

Now, let’s take a look at Colin Powell’s statement to the United Nations alleging that Iraq had a nuclear program and Weapons of Mass Destruction:

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

Possibly even more troubling is that Representative Souder just seems to be in a serious state of denial:

Souder said he doesn’t agree that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “All I accept is we haven’t found them,” he said.

Souder said he and other Republicans are disappointed at the post-invasion decisions but that much of the public disapproval of the way Bush is handling things in Iraq is because of media coverage. He said part is anti-Bush bias and part is the nature of modern media coverage.

So Souder believes that Iraq had a WMD program so significant it justified immediate invasion without delay for further inspection by the UN inspectors. And yet, despite the size of this formidable arsenal, we haven’t been able to find a trace of it, despite having control of the country for 2.5 years.

Oh, and it’s TV’s fault.

Democratic Representative Murtha put the Republicans on their heels, seeking to introduce the following resolution:

Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That:

Section 1. The deployment of United States forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and the forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date.

Section 2. A quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S Marines shall be deployed in the region.

Section 3 The United States of America shall pursue security and stability in Iraq through diplomacy.

The Republicans were scared to debate and vote the resolution. Instead, all they could do was turn the resolution into a strawman. They forced amendments to the resolution so that it called for:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.

They removed the provision of practicality and pursuing the goal through other means, instead they had courage enough only to face a cartoonish version of the original resolution.

In short, the House Republicans were unwilling and afraid to discuss the War in Iraq seriously. Instead, you had character slurs from the likes of Republican Representative Jean Schmidt:

[A marine] asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.

Representative Schmidt is not fit to polish Representative Murtha’s combat boot, and she has the nerve to call him a coward. But not, apparently, the nerve to stand by her words. When a Congressman from Arkansas demanded that her words be taken down, she put her tail between her legs:

Mr. Speaker, my remarks were not directed at any member of the House and I did not intend to suggest that they applied to any member. Most especially the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania. I therefore ask for unanimous consent that my words be withdrawn.

Inexcusable. This isn’t some damned game. Our soldiers are dying. Our treasury is looted. We are no safer. Whatever this has or hasn’t done for Iraqis, it hasn’t done a single thing to improve the lives of Americans who are sacrificing their blood and treasure. And the House Republicans, except apparently for 6 of them who refused to play along with their colleagues, just want to play word games with the issue.

Good thing Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was running the show when the Senate pretended to care about oil companies gouging the public. As MSNBC reported:

The Senate hearing had yet to begin when a dispute erupted over whether the top executives of five major oil companies should testify under oath about their record profits. Democrats wanted it that way, but Republicans balked, calling such a move a needless photo op that smacked of grandstanding. So no oath was taken.

Such a “needless photo op would have,” among other things, have put the oil execs under a legal obligation to tell the truth. As it was, they were apparently under no such obligation, and took full advantage. According to the Washington Post, the Oil CEOs have been caught fibbing at that hearing:

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate “to my knowledge,” and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.

I’m not trying to make a big fuss over oil policy or whether or not Big Oil is colluding or otherwise taking undue advantage of its market position (in large part because I’m not sure what “undue advantage” is.) But, it looks really, really bad for Senator Stevens and the Republicans on the Senate Energy Committee to go to such great lengths to avoid having the CEOs put under oath only to have them caught lying about whether their companies were involved with Dick Cheney’s energy task force. I mean, even the baseball players testifying about steroid use were sworn in. Regardless of the merits of the oil hearing, it’s at least more important to the country than steroids in baseball.

Leo Morris at Opening Arguments posts Opening Arguments: No fiscal discipline? Shocking which quotes Mort Kondracke

If Washington, D.C., politicians were serious about fiscal discipline, especially to prepare for the baby boom retirement crisis, they’d raise taxes and cut spending. But they aren’t serious.

As the debate on budget reconciliation right now shows, Republicans are trying to cut spending some and cut taxes more. Democrats want to raise taxes some and spend a lot more. And the twain shall never meet.

I posted in the comments over there that the twain sort of met during the Clinton administration. Taxes went up some, and I think spending got cut some — at least spending didn’t increase much because of the gridlock between the Democratic President and the Republican Congress. I could go for a bit more gridlock — seems like we’re all safest that way.

Update Sort of related. The Christian Science Monitor has a story about “what the 2005 elections mean.” The article suggests that outgoing Virginia Governor and probable Presidential candidate Mark Warner as well as a Democratic message of “fiscal discipline” are the biggest winners in the 2005 election.

Perhaps the biggest winner out of Mr. Kaine’s victory is Mark Warner, soon-to-be former governor of Virginia. By all appearances – including a trip next week to New Hampshire, host of the first presidential primary – he is thinking of running for president. If Kaine’s victory is in large part an endorsement of Mr. Warner’s four years as governor, then it may also be evidence that the Democrats’ successful model of running centrist Southern governors for president is not dead.

And if Democrats are looking for policy lessons out of Warner’s stewardship of Virginia, they need look no further than an area that used to be a Republican strength: fiscal responsibility.

“What Mark Warner helped to do is transform the political culture of a red state and make it far more amenable to Democratic perspectives,” says Bob Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “Clearly, in Virginia and in the South, Democrats have found it successful to run as the fiscally responsible party. Given all the current spending by the Bush administration, there’s an opportunity for that message to resonate nationally.”

For Warner, “fiscal responsibility” translated into spending cuts in some areas and raising taxes in others. He heads for the finish line of his term with approval ratings above 70 percent. Kaine, the current lieutenant governor, benefited from Warner’s record. He even won in conservative Virginia Beach, which Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had lost by 30,000 votes in 2004.

Following up a bit on my previous entry, the Christian Science Monitor has an article today entitled Workers face paycheck pinch.

For all its strength, the current economic expansion is not boosting the American worker’s paycheck.

Wages have been rising nominally: Average pay rose 8 cents last month to $16.27 an hour, according to a government report Friday. That’s not fast enough to counter inflation.

By one common measure, average pay for an hour’s work has less purchasing power than it had four years ago – when the current growth cycle began.

It’s a pattern of weak wage growth that’s now several years old, but the trend has worsened in recent months. Wages for the most recent quarter were 2.3 percent lower, after inflation, than workers received a year before.

. . .

Traditionally, rising productivity allows employers to raise wages without raising prices. Thus it holds the key to rising living standards in society. But lately, wage growth has lagged behind fast-rising US productivity. Several reasons, beyond the downward pressure of global competition, may be involved:

• The cost of benefits. Some employers have stopped offering health insurance, but those that do are spending more, and thus boosting overall compensation even though hourly wages aren’t rising.

• Price-sensitive consumers. As energy costs rose, many companies didn’t feel able to pass those costs along to customers. So they have to pay their oil bills by cutting costs elsewhere. Pay hikes get smaller.

• Government policies. Some researchers say a failure to crack down on illegal immigration – whether at the border or in the workplace – has depressed wages for the less skilled.

• Weak bargaining power. The decline of union membership in the private workforce has had a significant dampening effect on wages, some economists say.

. . .

Other economists counter that a more flexible, less unionized labor market has helped the US trounce its European peers in job creation. Americans spend less time unemployed, but their incomes have arguably suffered as a result.

. . .

[O]n the issue of real pay for an hour’s work, none of the government surveys show wages rising by even 1 percent a year between 1979 and 2003.

I contend that real economic growth that matters to ordinary Americans, to the extent government action can help, depends on economic stimulus that puts money in the pockets of the ordinary citizen. If they have cash in their pockets, they’ll go out and buy washers and dryers. Tax cuts for the rich is, at best, a wasteful means of stimulus. Sure, they might go out and invest in new American companies, but then again, they might invest in foreign companies, or they might buy a yacht or expensive artwork or some other luxury that doesn’t do much to improve the lot of your average working stiff.