Government – Page 65 – artdiamondblog.com

Cougar Dies in Connecticut Three Months AFTER Government Declares It Extinct

(p. A19) Boulder, Colo.
You have to admit, the cat had moxie.
The 140-pound cougar that was spotted last month among the estates of Greenwich — and was later struck and killed on the Wilbur Cross Parkway — has been the talk of southern Connecticut. New England, along with most of the Eastern United States, hasn’t been cougar country since the 19th century, when the animals were exterminated by a killing campaign that started in colonial times. So where had this cougar come from?
Now we know the answer, and it couldn’t be more astonishing. Wildlife officials, who at first assumed the cat was a captive animal that had escaped its owners, examined its DNA and concluded that it was a wild cougar from the Black Hills of South Dakota. It had wandered at least 1,500 miles before meeting its end at the front of an S.U.V. in Connecticut. That is one impressive walkabout.
You have to appreciate this cat’s sense of irony, too. The cougar showed up in the East just three months after the Fish and Wildlife Service declared the eastern cougar extinct, a move that would exempt the officially nonexistent subspecies of the big cat from federal protection. Perhaps this red-state cougar traveled east to send a message to Washington: the federal government can make pronouncements about where cougars are not supposed to be found, but a cat’s going to go where a cat wants to go.

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID BARON “The Cougar Behind Your Trash Can.” The New York Times (Fri., July 29, 2011): A19.
(Note: the online version of the commentary is dated July 28, 2011.)

Chinese Government High-Speed Trains Are Financial “Black Holes”

(p. A11) BEIJING-A high-speed train from Beijing is scheduled to glide into Shanghai’s Hongqiao railway station on Thursday after its inaugural run, an event meant to showcase China’s technological prowess but one that lately has become part of a national debate about the pitfalls of megainvestment projects.
. . .
Detractors focus on corruption and safety problems that have lately tarnished the project’s image. Pricey tickets, they say, underscore China’s already huge rich-poor gap–and doom the trains to run half-empty, straining the national budget for years to come.
. . .
“Physically, they are good assets,” says Ding Yuan, an accounting professor at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. “Financially, they are all black holes.”
More broadly, the high-speed rail problems underscore the shortcomings of a growth strategy that depends ever more heavily on investment in projects whose economic payoffs are uncertain.
. . .
Railways Minister Liu Zhijun proselytized for high-speed rail, telling leaders from Hubei province in January that they needed to “seize the rare opportunity to accelerate the development of the railway,” according to a Railways Ministry report.
. . .
Government spending on rail projects ballooned from 155 billion yuan in 2006 ($24 billion) to a budgeted 745 billion yuan ($115 billion) in 2011, according to state-run Xinhua news agency. The ministry’s debt ballooned to about 5% of GDP in the first quarter of 2011 from about 2% in 2007.
The project’s flaws became painfully clear in February, when Mr. Liu was fired amid allegations that he embezzled around $30 million. Although government investigators didn’t cite criticisms of the railway project, Mr. Liu’s successor, Sheng Guangzu, has scaled back plans to focus on projects already under construction, rather than expansion. Railway consultants say work has been suspended on new lines, including Hubei projects the fired minister was pushing.

For the full story, see:
BRIAN SPEGELE and BOB DAVIS. “High-Speed Train Links Beijing, Shanghai; Cornerstone of China’s Rail Expansion Illustrates Megaprojects’ Speed Bumps.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., JUNE 29, 2011): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“The Government Wants to Decide What We Eat”

“A rule against selling food with added vitamins and minerals, like canned pudding, prompted the removal of several popular products from Abigail’s, a shop in Copenhagen.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) COPENHAGEN — For the last seven years, Marianne Orum has owned a narrow store in a charming street in the heart of this Danish capital.

A sign advertises “British and South African Food and Drink.”
The shelves are lined with products familiar to most Americans, like Betty Crocker Pancake Mix, but also more exotic items, like Heinz’s Taste of Home Delightful Spotted Dick Pudding in cans, and bottles of Harviestoun Old Engine Oil porter.
But in January Ms. Orum got a phone call from government food inspectors. Tipped off by a competitor, they told her she was selling products that were fortified with vitamins or minerals, and such products require government approval, which she did not have, so she would have to take them off the shelves.
The culprits were Ovaltine; a shredded wheat cereal called Shreddies; a malt drink called Horlicks; and Marmite, the curiously popular yeast byproduct that functions in England as a sandwich spread, snack or base for a soup (just add boiling water), and is sometimes known as tar-in-the-jar.
“That’s four products in one go,” said Ms. Orum, clearly angered. “That’s a lot for a small company.”
Application for approval, she said, costs almost $1,700 per product, and time for approval can run up to six months or more; the fee is not refunded if the product is rejected.
“It’s a strange thing, this attitude in Denmark,” she said, in a tone of exasperation. “The government wants to decide what we eat and not.”

For the full story, see:
JOHN TAGLIABUE. “COPENHAGEN JOURNAL; Extra Vitamins? A Great Idea, Except in Denmark.” The New York Times (Fri., June 17, 2011): A6.
(Note: the online version of the story was dated June 16, 2011.)

Fannie Mae Execs “Resorted to Ad Hominem Attacks” When They Vilified the “Economic Pencil Brains”

Source of book image: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

(p. C6) Although the financial crisis of 2008 has left a long trail of casualties, one group has benefited from the cataclysm: financial journalists. Several have already published books shedding light on the unprecedented events that caused investment banks to fail, global stock markets to plummet and borrowers to lose their homes. “Reckless Endangerment,” by Gretchen Morgenson, assistant business and financial editor and a columnist at The New York Times, and the financial analyst Joshua Rosner, is a worthy addition to the genre.
. . .
The book begins in 1994 with President Bill Clinton’s kicking off a public-private partnership to extend homeownership to more Americans. . . .
. . .
. . . the institution to which the authors devote the most ink is Fannie Mae, the government-supported enterprise created in 1938 to make home loans more accessible. And the person they hold most accountable is someone whose role in the “mortgage maelstrom” has until now “escaped scrutiny”: James A. Johnson, Fannie Mae’s chief executive from 1991 to 1998. Mr. Johnson was the “anonymous architect of the public-private homeownership drive that almost destroyed the economy in 2008,” the authors assert. “He was especially adept at manipulating lawmakers, eviscerating regulators and leaving taxpayers with the bill.”
The description of Mr. Johnson’s role is damning — and although the account lacks his perspective, it is thoroughly supported through scores of interviews with academics, government officials and industry executives, some of whom are granted anonymity. While Mr. Johnson didn’t respond to interview requests over five months, according to the authors, they overcome this obstacle with impressive use of public records and secondary sources, carefully attributed in the text or described in a two-page “Notes on Sources.”
. . .
A particular strength of this book is the number of doubters the authors unearthed: the unsung government analysts, public lawyers and private researchers who dared to question policy decisions and stand up to the formidable “housers,” as the true believers in government subsidies for home ownership are called.
The reader has a sickening sense of missed opportunity as these prophets are ignored or, worse, vilified, by those in a position to halt the mania. When a Congressional Budget Office researcher in 1995 reveals the multibillion-dollar extent of the government’s subsidy to Fannie Mae and its brother institution, Freddie Mac (and that one-third of these benefits never reached borrowers), he suggests that “Congress may want to revisit the special relationship.” Unable to assail the merits of his analysis, outraged Fannie Mae executives resorted to ad hominem attacks, calling budget office officials “digit-heads” and “economic pencil brains.”

For the full review, see:
PAM LUECKE. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Nation Goes on Its Merry Way to Ruin.” The New York Times (Tues., June 28, 2011): C6.
(Note: the online version of the review was dated June 27, 2011.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Book being reviewed:
Morgenson, Gretchen, and Joshua Rosner. Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. New York: Times Books, 2011.

Findings “Strongly Suggest” Cholera in Haiti Due to United Nations

(p. 5A) PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Scientists have presented the strongest evidence yet that U.N. peacekeepers imported the cholera strain that has killed more than 5,500 people in Haiti.
A report published in the July issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal says research findings “strongly suggest” that the U.N. contingent from Nepal contaminated a Haitian river because of poor sanitation at a base. Author Renaud Piarroux had previously blamed peacekeepers. This study is more complete and its methodology was reviewed by other scientists.

Source:
AP. “U.N. may have brought cholera strain to Haiti.” Omaha World-Herald (Thursday, June 30, 2011): 5A.

Technology as an Enabler of Free Speech

“Volunteers have built a wireless Internet around Jalalabad, Afghanistan, from off-the-shelf electronics and ordinary materials.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

The main point of the passages quoted below is to illustrate how, with the right technology, we can dance around tyrants in order to enable human freedom.
(But as a minor aside, note in the large, top-of-front-page photo above, that Apple once again is visibly the instrument of human betterment—somewhere, before turning to his next challenge, one imagines a fleeting smile on the face of entrepreneur Steve Jobs.)

(p. 1) The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”
Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

For the full story, see:
JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF. “U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., June 12, 2011): 1 & 8.

Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Bricks-and-Mortar Restaurants Use Police (Instead of Better Food) to Beat Food Trucks

“Kim Ima and Kenny Lao parked their food trucks on Front Street in Dumbo.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D4) FOOD trucks, those rolling symbols of New York City’s infatuation with haute casual food, are suddenly being chased from Midtown Manhattan. In the last 10 days, the Treats Truck, which has sold cookies and brownies for four years during lunchtime at West 45th Street near Avenue of the Americas, has been told by police officers that it is no longer welcome there, nor at its late-afternoon 38th Street and Fifth Avenue location. The Rickshaw Dumpling truck, a presence for three years at West 45th Street near the Treats Truck, has been shooed away as well.

The police “have told us they no longer want food trucks in Midtown,” said Kim Ima, the owner of the Treats Truck, a pioneer of the city’s new-wave food-truck movement, who began cultivating customers on West 45th Street in 2007.
. . .
Mr. Lao and other food-truck operators said they suspect that the police are responding to complaints by brick-and-mortar businesses that resent competition. Such was the case last year, when store merchants on the Upper East Side complained about Patty’s Taco Truck, which sold tortas, tacos de lengua and cemitas on Lexington Avenue. The truck was towed several times and the operator arrested, prompting the Street Vendor Project, an advocate for vendors based at the Urban Justice Center, to file the lawsuit that resulted in Judge Wright’s ruling, which said food is merchandise that can be regulated.

For the full story, see:
GLENN COLLINS. “Food Trucks Shooed From Midtown.” The New York Times (Weds., June 29, 2011): D4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story is dated June 28, 2011.)

$130,000 Federal Stimulus Used by Omaha Public Schools for Manual Attacking American Institutions

(p. 1A) The Omaha Public Schools used more than $130,000 in federal stimulus dollars to buy each teacher, administrator and staff member a manual on how to become more culturally sensitive.
The book by Virginia education consultants could raise some eyebrows with its viewpoints.
The authors assert that American government and institutions create advantages that “channel wealth and power to white people,” that color-blindness will not end racism and that educators should “take action for social justice.”
The book says that teachers should acknowledge historical systemic oppression in schools, including racism, sexism, homophobia and “ableism,” defined by the authors as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities.
The authors argue that public school teachers must raise their cultural awareness to better serve minority students and improve academic achievement.

For the full story, see:
Joe Dejka. “OPS Says It Won’t Go totally by the Book.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, July 10, 2011): 1A & 2A.
(Note: the online version of the article has the title “OPS buys 8,000 diversity manuals.”)

Feds Protect Us from “Older Tasty Tomato Varieties”

(p. C3) Historically, when a farmer has learned to grow a tasty variety, that farmer has actually been scorned and prevented from shipping it.

“Regulations actually prohibit growers in the southern part of Florida from exporting many of the older tasty tomato varieties because their coloration and shape don’t conform to what the all-powerful Florida Tomato Committee says a tomato should look like,” Mr. Estabrook writes.

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; That Perfect Florida Tomato, Cultivated for Bland Uniformity.” The New York Times (Weds., July 6, 2011): C3.
(Note: the online version of the review is dated July 5, 2011.)

The web site of the Florida Tomato Committee describes its Federal mandate:

The Florida Tomato Committee is a Federal Marketing Order that was established pursuant to Federal Marketing Agreement and Order No. 966 as amended regulating the handling of tomatoes and has authority over the tomatoes grown in Florida’s production area comprising the counties of Pinellas, Hillsborough, Polk, Osceola, Brevard and all counties situated south. It affects tomatoes that are shipped outside the regulated area, which includes that portion of the state of Florida situated east of the Suwanee River and south of the Georgia border.

The Committee funds research and development projects and marketing promotions that focus on maximizing Florida tomato movement, including consumer and marketing research and customized marketing programs.

Florida Tomatoes … quality you can trust. Each Florida field-grown tomato shipped out of Florida is regulated by a Federal Marketing Order that controls grade, size, quality and maturity. The standards are the toughest in the world and ensure that Florida tomatoes are the best you can buy.

Source:
http://www.floridatomatoes.org/AboutUs.aspx
(Note: ellipsis in original.)

The book under review is:
Estabrook, Barry. Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2011.

Katrina Was Less a Natural Disaster, and More an Artificial One Caused by Government

“Harry Shearer in the documentary “The Big Uneasy.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B6) . . . Mr. Shearer is serious about his reasons for adding to a Katrina genre that includes two documentaries by Spike Lee (“When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” and “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise”), another about custody battles over pets lost in the storm (“Mine”), and Werner Herzog’s reinterpretation of “Bad Lieutenant” (“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”).

“What they are missing is why it happened, why people suffered,” said Mr. Shearer, who spoke last week from his home in New Orleans.
At one-day screenings in about 160 theaters around the country on Monday, “The Big Uneasy” will fill in the blanks with a feature-length description of what it sees as failings by the Army Corps of Engineers and others.
Mr. Shearer said he was inspired to make the film last year, after hearing President Obama refer to the hurricane as a “natural disaster.” Mr. Shearer argues there was nothing natural about the breakdown of systems that were supposed to protect the city.

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL CIEPLY. “Katrina Film Takes Aim at Army Corps of Engineers.” The New York Times (Mon., August 30, 2010): B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story is dated August 29, 2010.)