brainiac conspiracy

Sucker's Bet of The Day

I got a fiver says Colbert shows up on the set of The Report with a flamethrower next week. Any takers?

---Vitelius

The Salonen Violin Concerto

Regular readers of this site---all seven or eight of you---know that the Baron is something of a culture maven with a fondness for arts and architecture, food and wine, and opera and the symphony, in addition to the usual political rants. I try to keep to a varied calendar of events throughout the year, but even so, it isn't every night I get to see an actual world premiere of anything. But last night I did, down at the Rodent Room, this one presented courtesy of our resident maestro, Esa-Pekka Salonen, who hands over his baton as conductor of the LA Philharmonic to Gustavo Dudamel at the end of the current season. So today, in a craven attempt to poach a little Web traffic from the local music and dead-tree sites, a review.

It has now been 17 years since Salonen took over over the reins of a talented if occasionally underinspired orchestra here, and the legacy he leaves behind is mind-boggling in its depth and scope: lavish readings of film scores (Bernard Herrmann, Silvestre Revueltas), ambitious opera stagings (Pelleas et Melisande in '95, the Tristan Project in 2004), the occasional nod to pop and jazz (as with Wynton Marsalis' All Rise in 2001), dozens of new commissions and world premieres, dozens more performances of works previously never performed by the Philharmonic, and a substantial body of original work (LA Variations, Wing on Wing, Helix, a Piano Concerto) written either for the orchestra or (as with Wing) for the new concert hall itself. While there have also been magisterial surveys of all the usual symphonic warhorses (Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven), he has also challenged us as concertgoers---nearly every season---to put aside our preconceptions and listen to works both old and new in heretofore unthought-of contexts: who would've guessed, for instance, that Josef Haydn and Gyorgy Ligeti would make such an attractive pairing, as they did in '98? And no conductor in this town has so fearlessly and tirelessly championed modern music, nor managed to do so in such a manner as to make it accessible---even desirable---to normally staid and conservative concertgoers: composers such as Ligeti or Witold Lutoslwaski, whose works might in another era, under a less-adventurous conductor, have been performed once every five or six years are now staples of the Philharmonic's repertoire every season, and usually performed before sellout audiences. And in last night's Violin Concerto, the sum and total of Salonen's LA experience---everything that he's seemingly learned, interpreted, processed, synthesized and created anew from his tenure at the podium here---were laid bare in a 30-minute opus of staggering emotional range, in a reading that was by turns turbulent, radiant, playful, meditative and, in the end, searching: In short, a deeply heartfelt performance of a work that is to date the richest and most fully realized effort that he's yet composed for a full orchestra.

The soloist was Leila Josefowicz, the MacArthur-granted former Valley girl who has grown up to become a fearsome champion of new music and who was last seen hereabouts shredding her way through the Bartok 2nd Violin Concerto under Dudamel last year. Whereas her reading of Bartok was all blood, guys, and sinew, her phrasing with Salonen's work tended towards the light and lyrical; even the furious, off-to-the-races barrage of arpeggios that opens the piece (literally dropping us into a work in progress, as in a story by Chekhov) gave off a sort of sweetness that contrasted oddly well to the work's loud percussive passages. (Among the instruments employed in the piece is a rock-style drumset, used sparingly and to breathtaking effect throughout.) Slow and demanding microtonal glissandos were handled near-effortlessly during the slow second movement, and the last movement's closing denoument, which invokes a plaintive and wistful sense of yearning for goals yet unrealized, was exquisitely and movingly phrased. One other thing she brought in spades---she had to!---was a fearsome level of stamina; the concerto opens with a solo, and closes with one too, and there are precious few breaks in between; I would not estimate more than five minutes of downtime during the entire work.

In his program notes, Salonen relates how Josefowicz pushed him continually (he composed the work expressly for her, and completed it only last month!) to make the piece more challenging and difficult for her. In that he certainly succeeded, at the same time simplifying and scaling back the orchestration in places so as not to overpower the soloist's lines or overburden the listener's ear with clutter (an occasional fault in the Piano Concerto). Long story short, there hasn't been a piece of new music of this type that's been as well conceived, immediately arresting and ultimately gratifying since the Adams Violin Concerto composed 13 years ago, and I suspect that it, like the Adams, will quickly find its way into the gotta-master repertory of aspiring young violin virtuosos everywhere.

The evening opened with one of Ligeti's ethereal tone poems (Clocks and Clouds) and closed with Beethoven's crowd-pleaser Fifth (archetypal Salonen programming to sandwich around a brand-new work, this), both rendered near-flawlessly and to rapturous and thunderous applause. And while Salonen's tenure officially ends next week with an all-Stravinsky concert, one could not help thinking that this evening's show was his valedictory address to the concertgoers in Los Angeles---as he put it in the concert notes, "a kind of summary of my experiences as a musician and a human being at the watershed age of 50." And there is certainly no mistaking this violin concerto as a watershed moment in his development as a composer.

The philharmonic's few performances to date under Dudamel have all been near-transcendent experiences, but as bright as the future looks from here, we're going to miss Salonen's presence all the same. He's bequeathed us a world-class band, a world-class concert hall, and the cultural life of the City of the Angels---and all of us who live in it---has been enriched beyond words by his time spent among us.

---Vitelius

When Words Fail

Some things just leave you speechless:

After the Fed intervened in September, it made attempts to convince some of AIG's foreign counterparties to accept a reduced payout. They declined. New York Fed officials worried that U.S. defaults on the swaps would lead to "a cascade of other defaults" by firms around the world that had counted on full payouts, one of the officials said.

The idea of a discount was met with "a very hostile reaction" and warnings that such a stance would be viewed as a default, officials said. They pointed to the global financial chaos after the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Authorities in England and Luxembourg seized Pakistan-based BCCI, and its creditors scrambled for assets across the globe.

BCCI? Hmmmm, why does that name ring a bell? Oh yes, now I recall:

BCCI's criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI's bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers.

Well heck, we certainly wouldn't want to repeat that mistake again. Back to our narrative:

Once the decision was made to fully pay AIG's foreign counterparties, including $2.8 billion to Deutsche Bank and $6.9 billion to Societe Generale, the officials concluded that it would be discriminatory to pay less than 100 cents on the dollar to U.S. banks holding the same
contracts . . .

Columbia's [John] Coffee countered that "you could have asked everybody to scale down their expectations at least 10 or 15 percent, and that wouldn't have been discriminatory. And if you asked Congress, I think they would have been much more in favor of being discriminatory towards foreign banks, because this is funded with U.S.-taxpayer-funded dollars."

In bankruptcy, he said, the swaps might've been settled at 20 cents on the dollar. In other words, the government had leverage and chose not to use it.

Atrios is right. This really is the banksters' country now. The rest of us merely live in it.

---Vitelius

Lies, Damned Lies, and Gut Indices

You don't need to read past the second sentence of this op-ed in the Journal today to call rampant bullshit:

In the 1990s, defense cuts helped pay for increased domestic spending, and that is true today.

No they didn't. The defense cuts of the 1990s helped pay for deficit reduction. As in, the deficits that were rung up during the 1980s by a tax-cutting, free-spending Republican president named Reagan.

Of course, that didn't stop the wingnuts from accusing Bill Clinton of gutting the military, even though, as this chart illustrates, defense outlays by the end of Clinton's term were nearly the same as they were when he first entered the White House, even though the Cold War had ended and we no longer had the Soviets to worry about.

And similarly, there are people who have accused Jimmy Carter for years of gutting the military as well, even though defense spending actually rose during Carter's term in office. So it only makes sense that Barack Obama is also being accused of the same heinous crime against the Republic, even after requesting a $20 billion increase for the Pentagon next year.

Why do they do it? For all sorts of reasons: Because these people are pathological liars; because it is in their nature to simply make shit up; because it is in their nature to re-cast members of the opposing party as enemies of the state, which they have been doing for the last 50 years; because they are still busy fighting the Civil War Cold War in their minds; and because, quite frankly, too many outlets in the mainstream media have allowed them to get away with it, unchallenged, for decades. As the chart shows again, if we are to use year-to-year increases or decreases in military spending as some sort of Gut Index, then the biggest---in fact, the only---"gutter" of the military in the last 30 years was George W. Bush's father. This, of course, does not dovetail with the preferred wingnut narrative---Republicans = loyal; Democrats = traitors---so it is simply ignored. Luckily, we now have a burgeoning fact-checking apparatus known as the Internets to call out this nonsense. And that's why I suspect the Wingnut Party will get little if any traction this time around out of recycling this meme for the umpteenth time. Because there are simply too many other reliable sources of news beyond the malleable media outlets they've relied upon to freely disseminate their bullshit for so many years. Barack Obama really has come along at exactly the right time.

---Vitelius

Tuesday Threads Ahoy

• Obama visits Iraq. Troops don't mutiny. Wingnut heads explode.

• The heretofore confidential ICRC torture report has been released. It deserves to be read in full. There are abundant "gotcha" pull quotes to be found on nearly every page, but one from page 26 reminds us of the urgency of---and perhaps, the absolute legal necessity for---holding legal and/or Congressional investigations:

. . . in addition to the continuous solitary confinement and incommunicado detention which itself was a for of ill-treatment, twelve of the fourteen [detainees] alleged that they were subjected to systematic physical and/or psychological ill-treatment. This was a consequence of both the treatment and the material conditions which formed part of the interrogation regime, as well as the overall detention regime. This regime was clearly designed to undermine human dignity and to create a sense of futility by inducing, in many cases, severe physical and mental pain and suffering, with the aim of obtaining compliance and extracting information, resulting in exhaustion, depersonalisation and dehumanization. (Emphasis added.)

The torture was not due to the spontaneous impulses of "a few bad apples." It was institutional in nature, and the preferred means to extract confessions. It was, in other words, official government policy, and that is why we cannot allow the current administration to ignore systematic and premeditated violations of US and international law in the name of "looking forward." AG Holder, kindly release those torture memos, now.

• On a related note, it says something about the current state of political affairs in our country that ex-banana republics are willing to insist on standards of accountability and adherence to the rule of law from their leaders that our own political ruling class feels no apparent need to emulate.

• Idiot of The Day: Joe Scarborough:

So Joe doesn't think Obama is qualified to make decisions about the economy because "he's never taken a paycheck from a profit-making company." Now, as David Kurtz points out, this claim is unmitigated bullshit, but even if it weren't, we would have to agree that the following people were similarly unqualified to be President of the United States, according to the standards of one Mr. Joseph Scarborough:

Lyndon Johnson
John F. Kennedy
Dwight Eisenhower
William Howard Taft
Theodore Roosevelt
James A. Garfield
Andrew Johnson
James Buchanan
Franklin Pierce
Zachary Taylor
William Henry Harrison
John Quincy Adams

None of these people worked in a private-sector job before being elected President. And a few other ex-Presidents were near-goldbrickers: Woodrow Wilson spent only one year as a private attorney, Bill Clinton spent but two in private practice, and James Polk and Gerald R. Ford spent only three prior to assuming the Presidency. And if we are going to include former Presidents who inherited their families' estates and who owned slaves (i.e., people who had their burgers flipped for them, as Joe might say), then we will need to include James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, among other unqualified persons.

Funny, too, how Scarborough overlooks the impressive list of former chief executives who collected paychecks from money-losing businesses:

George W. Bush
Ulysses S. Grant

Jefferson, it should also be noted, was particularly well qualified for the Presidency of Scarborough Land. Besides having slaves to flip his burgers for him, he was a notoriously bad businessman---despite being born into one of Virginia's richest families and inheriting more than 5,000 acres of valuable farmland, he was deeply in debt when he passed away, and his estate was forced to sell off what was left of his holdings (only 550 acres on the present-day site of Monticello) to pay off his creditors in 1831.

Once again, the only things that really amaze me about these crazy people are (a) the fact that they are deemed sufficiently possessed of intellectual insight to warrant a daily talk show on a major TV network, and (b) that millions of our fellow citizens apparently believe their hokum. I fear we are in for more sleepless nights in the immediate future. (Sources: whitehouse.gov, Britannica, Wiki.)

---Vitelius

The Depression is over. The Depression hasn't arrived. Who the heck can tell anymore? So apropos of nothing, a break from the usual doom and gloom. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, seppie nere is squid ink. It's sold in speciality-food stores in portion-sized packets, and is usually used as part of a sauce for pasta, risotto or polenta. Popular in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region of Italy around Venice, it imparts any dish with a thick, creamy texture and a slightly briny aftertaste. On the subject, please click here to make a donation for the victims of the tragic earthquake in Abruzzo today.)

RISOTTO IN SEPPIE NERE

For the Seppie Nere:
1 generous tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced into 1/8-inch half-rings
1 medium bell pepper, roasted, peeled, cored and seeded, cut lenthwise into 1/8-in strips
2 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 lb squid tube and tentacles, cleaned and rinsed, tubes cut crosswise into 1-inch rings
2 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 packet seppie nere, approximately 4 grams
1 thyme sprig
Salt and pepper to taste

For the risotto:
3 1/2 cups best quality chicken or vegetable stock
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup ham or prosciutto, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1/2 head radicchio, washed, cored, cut in half lengthwise and crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
1 cup arborio rice
Chopped Italian parsley and lemon zest for garnish

In a large saucepot over medium heat, add 1 tbsp oil and bring up to heat. Add the onion slices and cook until golden brown, 5 minutes. Add the roasted pepper and cook 2 minutes more. Add the garlic and cook until it gives off its aroma, 1 minute. Add the squid and tomato paste; stir thoroughly to combine. Add the white wine and seppie nere, then season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then cover loosely and turn the heat down to a mild simmer. Continue to cook, lid slightly ajar, until the squid are tender and nearly all of the liquid has evaporated from the pot, 50 to 60 minutes.

Thirty minutes before serving, heat the chicken stock in a medium saucepot until hot; keep warm over low heat. Add the remaining olive oil to a large saute pan over medium heat. Then add the ham and cook, stirring occasionally, until the ham has started to caramelize, 5 minutes. Add the radicchio and stir to combine. Cook until the strips have started to wilt, 3 minutes. Add the arborio rice and stir until the rice has absorbed all the liquids in the pan, 3 minutes. Add 1 cup of the hot stock to the pan and stir to combine. Turn down the heat to medium low and continue to stir, adding more stock, half a cup at a time, until the rice can no longer absorb any more liquid and has developed a thick and soupy consistency, approximately 20 minutes. The rice should taste slightly al dente by now.

Pour of the contents of the saucepot into the risotto, stirring throughly to combine. Continue to cook 2 to 3 minutes more, until any excess moisture has evaporated from the pan. Cover the saute pan and turn off the heat. Wait 1 minute before removing the lid.

Mound a generous portion of the risotto into the middle of a wide-rimmed soup bowl. Garnish with the parsley and lemon zest. Serve hot. Serves 4 as an opening course, 2 as a main.

---Vitelius

Dear Mr. President, please make it stop fire this two-timing asshat.

Back in 2002, a new employee of Harvard University's endowment manager named Iris Mack wrote a letter to the school's president, Lawrence Summers, that would ultimately get her fired.

In the letter, dated May 12 of that year, Mack told Summers that she was "deeply troubled and surprised" by things she had seen in her new job as a quantitative analyst at Harvard Management Co.

She would go on to say, in later e-mails and conversations, that she felt the endowment was taking on too much risk in derivatives investments, and that she suspected some of her colleagues were engaging in insider trading, according to a separate letter written by her lawyer that summarized the correspondence.

On July 2 Mack was fired. But six years later, the kinds of investments she allegedly warned about did blow up on Harvard. The endowment plunged 22 percent last summer, in part due to the collapse of the credit markets. As a result, the school is cutting costs and under criticism that it took on too much risk in its investment portfolio.

Mack, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from Harvard, had been with Harvard Management for just four months when she approached Summers. She asked him to keep her communications confidential, or risk making her life "a living hell."

Well, did he? No.

But on July 1, Mack was called into a meeting by her boss, Jack Meyer, then the chief of Harvard Management.

The next day Meyer fired her, according to the letter from her attorney, Jonathan Margolis, a copy of which was obtained by the Globe. Meyer told Mack that she was fired for making "baseless allegations against HMC to individuals outside of HMC," according to the Margolis letter.

Fire Larry Summers. Fire. Him. Now. Your pal, though not for much longer if you don't get rid of him,

---Vitelius

(H/t Ritholtz.)

March 3: Obama the radical has destroyed this economy.

April 2: The Depression is over. Obama has saved us.

I would really be getting worried by now if my head didn't hurt so much. (H/t Victor B.)

---Vitelius

If you haven't visited David Neiwert's site yet, I'd suggest daily viewing for the foreseeable future. Dave's field of study is, unfortunately, more timely and relevant now than ever. And I fear, like many of us, that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg that's heading straight at us. I ordered up a copy of his book this morning. I'll share a review down the road.

---Vitelius

And that's the polite term for people like these:

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said yesterday.

Executives from the Times Co. and Globe made the demands Thursday morning in an approximately 90-minute meeting with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, union officials said. The possible concessions include pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company, and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees now enjoyed by some veteran employees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union, which represents more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business office employees.

The concessions will be negotiated individually with each of the unions, said Totten and Ralph Giallanella, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 259, which represents about 200 drivers who deliver the newspaper.

"We all know the newspaper industry is going through great transition and loss,"' said Giallanella. "The ad revenues have fallen off the cliff. Just based on everything that's going on around the country, they're serious."

Word to Globe employees: you need some savvier union bosses than that guy. Yes, advertising revenues are down at the Globe, and at the Times, and at virtually every other major metropolitan daily and newsweekly. And yes, your parent company reported a $50 million operating loss last year. And you know what else? It's not your fault.

It's no big secret that newspaper advertising revenues, and print ad revenues in general, have been in gradual decline for years. Let's take a look at just one sales metric, which has historically comprised a significant percentage of print-publishing revenues:

In fact, print and classified revenues have declined nearly every year since 2000. Meanwhile, what changes did the New York Times Company make to its business model to adapt to the changing times?

January 1, 2003: The company completed its purchase of The Washington Post's 50 percent interest in the International Herald Tribune for $65 million. The Times Company, which had owned 50 percent of the IHT, became the sole owner.

March 18, 2005: The company acquired About.com, a leading online provider of consumer information, for $410 million.

August 25, 2006: The company acquired Baseline Studio Systems, a leading online database and research service for information on the film and television industries for $35 million.

November 19, 2007: The company staged a gala opening after relocating its headquarters from its previous address, at 229 West 43rd Street, to The New York Times Building, at 620 Eighth Avenue, on the west side of Times Square . . . The New York Times Co. paid more than $600 million for its share of the building, in 2007.

That's over $1.1 billion in acquisitions and expenditures while advertising revenues gradually declined. And the reaction of the markets to all these mergers and acquisitions?

[In] 2008, Harbinger Capital and Firebrand Partners, bought 19 percent of The Times. On September 10, 2008, it was reported that Carlos Slim, one of the world's wealthiest men, had acquired a 6.4 percent stake for $120 million. These moves put pressure on the company, whose advertising and circulation have faltered recently, to improve its return to shareholders.

And what was happening at the same time that all this private equity was being injected into the company?

In July [2008], the most recent month for which figures are available, The New York Times posted an ad sales decline of 15.3 per cent; at the regional papers, the figure was almost one-quarter. The New York Times made its first ever redundancies in the newsroom this year, and last week said it was outsourcing its distribution business, with the loss of 550 more jobs.

Uh oh. I think you know where this is heading. Revenues dropping? Need to pay off the creditors? Borrow more money:

On January 19, 2009, the Times Co. announced that it had accepted a $250 million loan from Slim. Slim will receive a 14 percent interest rate and warrants convertible into Times Company shares on the loan.

Let's review: Steady declines in revenues. Costly acquisitions. Increasing amounts of leverage from outside investors, who have lost hundreds of millions on their initial buy-ins. Massive fixed interest payments that must be extracted from declining yearly revenues. Put them all together, and what do you get?

The newspaper is currently over one billion dollars in debt.

Bingo! The same exact model of incompetent mismanagement that has spelled fiscal disaster for one newspaper after another across the country. Which begs some questions in retrospect:

I wonder how many members of the Boston Newspaper Guild were asked whether they approved of the purchase of About.com, which, as anyone who ever tried to use it in the earliest days of the decade could tell you, was a $400 million shell property? How many Teamsters got to vote in the election to spend $600 million on a new corporate high-rise, designed by Renzo Piano? How many delivery drivers and pre-press operators got the chance to approve a VC bailout package with extortion-level interest payments?

But now these same people are being told that if they're not willing to take mandatory pay cuts, surrender their pensions, and perform sundry other acts of atonement so a bunch of guys in suits on Wall Street and at 620 8th Avenue don't have to own up to their own bad business decisions, they will all lose their jobs.

Here's a novel suggestion to the Globe's union chiefs: Tell your corporate overlords to go fuck themselves. What the Times is doing right now is typical of the kind of posturing that people in boardrooms do all the time when they want to impress shareholders and creditors that yes, indeed, we're serious about keeping our margins at 25 percent, and yes, we'll be able to make the next interest payment, and no, we're not in danger of defaulting. Which I am guessing, the Times quite nearly is. A big company like the Times won't generally take huge loans with such onerous interest rates unless it's in serious need of cash right away.

Look at it this way: if the Times were going to shut down your paper, they would have already made the decision to do so. So why haven't they? Because you are still profitable, and they desperately need your revenue streams---more than anything right now---so if they're going to ask you to give up wages and benefits to maintain an unsustainable 25-percent company-wide profit margin to keep Carlos Slim content for the next fiscal quarter, make them pay for the privilege. Very few publishing companies are as heavily unionized as the Times is. Most aren't unionized at all. The Times is a weakened and heavily leveraged company. Try flexing your muscle just a little bit, and see what happens. My guess is, they'll find some money, somewhere, somehow, and come back to the table with some concessions like more generous buyouts, or grandfather clauses for current employees, or deferred benefits packages for new hires. But you'll never find out if you don't give it a try. One thing's certain---if you don't push back, these bastards will only continue to bleed your members with more layoffs and cost-cuts, and still more demands for concessions. And in the end, since you'll only be rewarding the same bad actors who will keep pursuing the same worst practices, you will only be postponing the inevitable. Just ask any union auto worker.

---Vitelius

Dear Mr. President, please make it stop.

Oh, and while you're at it, this too. Your pal,

---Vitelius

Shorter Pat Leahy: Naughty children must never, ever be scolded.

"I am not interested in a panel comprised of partisans intent on advancing partisan conclusions," Leahy said. "I regret that Senate Republicans have approached this matter to date as partisans. That was not my intent or focus. Indeed, it will take bipartisan support in order to move this forward. I continue to talk about this prospect with others in Congress, and with outside groups and experts. I continue to call on Republicans to recognize that this is not about partisan politics. It is about being honest with ourselves as a country. We need to move forward together."

[Head/table.]

Jesus. This rationale is so full of crap, it is hard to know where to begin critiquing it. Of course the Republicans in Congress are going to use any kind of Truth Commission as a vehicle to advance a series of empty rhetorical talking points. That's all they know how to do anymore. And pardon me, "moving forward," to my way of thinking, is not the same thing as rolling over and merely acceding to the same group of zealots who frankly have been at war with the 20th Century, let alone the 21st, since Barry Goldwater's time. If we are to follow this line of reasoning to its conclusion, we must not pass reasonable climate-change legislation if Republicans wish to maintain that global warming is a hoax. We must not fund scientific endeavors to find cures for diseases if Republicans claim it's all an excuse to kill unborn babies. Barack Obama tried playing this "bipartisan" game with Republicans over the stimulus package, and we all know how well that went over.

Finally---and this is most maddening---there is no substantive political price to pay for instigating war crimes hearings. A clear majority of Pat Leahy's fellow citizens want investigations of some sort into allegations of Bush administration war crimes. It's that simple. The Republican Party as it exists in the halls of Congress today is not interested in "moving forward," Senator. People who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted on the backs of dinosaurs in Eden need to be dragged kicking and screaming by sane and rational adults.

Somebody tell Pat Leahy that Americans didn't elect their first African-American president last November and give Democrats big majorities in both houses of Congress because they wanted a bunch of Republican reactionaries to continue dictating the terms of government policy. Stop enabling these monsters and do your fucking job.

---Vitelius

• Tasteless Analogies of the Day: Courtesy Bill Keller:

Keller was speaking at Stanford University to dedicate a new building for the campus newspaper--an event he likened to a "ribbon-cutting" for "a new Pontiac dealership."

The bombastic broadsheet editor went on to equate the keep-the-Times-alive movement to the cause of starving African refugees, saying, "Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause."

• Well, the recession didn't last long, now, did it? The Dow had another strong week, and folks on the Street couldn't be feeling more chipper:

"Everyone is in a buying mood," said Eric Ross, director of research at brokerage Canaccord Adams. "Everyone is feeling good. ... A lot of this is simply confidence."

• Meanwhile, a record number of Americans are now relying on food stamps to help feed their families.

• How to make half a billion a year while staying in a 15-percent income tax bracket? Get a gig like these guys have.

• We all know our 44th President is a smooth diplomat in public, but apparently he's not afraid to throw some good swift jabs behind closed doors:

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees---and, by extension, to themselves.

"These are complicated companies," one CEO said. Offered another: "We're competing for talent on an international market."

But President Barack Obama wasn't in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public's reaction to such explanations. "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that."

"My administration," the president added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

• This just in: All conservative political operatives are not---repeat, not---insane. It only seems that way sometimes.

• Lame Joke of The Day, courtesy of the Baron.

Q: What do you get when you cross Michelle Bachmann with Rush Limbaugh?

A: The Butthole Serfers.

Feel free to share.

---Vitelius

A couple of days ago, driving around town, I caught a few minutes of one of Thom Hartmann’s radio shows on Sirius, and he was interviewing some fella who was discussing some crazy National Animal ID System, a federal policy proposal to place electronic ID tags on (or in) every cow, pig, chicken and sheep that’s destined to find its way into America’s food supply for reasons ostensibly to do with food safety. Naturally, I assumed he was one of those nutbag conspiracists whom Hartmann often hosts---and jousts with---on his shows. But it soon became apparent that this guy was a perfectly sane and rational man---at least, he sounded that way over the airwaves---and this inspired me to do a little research on my own.

And wouldn’t you know, the guy was right. Better yet, the National Animal Identification System is not simply a proposal, it’s actually federal law, passed by (your Republican) Congress in 2005 and signed by President Bush. It’s largely flown under the public’s radar screen because the USDA has implemented it on a voluntary, not compulsory, basis up to now. But parts of NAIS have already found their way to the states, where they’re being enforced via USDA co-op funds. More troubling still, some industry groups are currently engaged in a concerted effort to make NAIS compulsory. (More later.)

The nuts-and-bolts work like this: Under NAIS, the rancher’s premises---his fields, feedlots, chicken coops or whatever---are registered into a database. Then each animal (or “groups of animals,” depending on ranching methodology) on the premises is given a unique ID number, via a microchip, earchip, DNA sample, retinal scan, or whatever. (No uniform ID system has yet been established.) Then a tracking system is set up, whereby the rancher or farmer monitors his herds, and files reports with USDA whenever certain “incidents" occur in the life of each animal---movements off premises, to the vet or a 4-H show, a calving, a purchase or sale, etc. The concept is to create a “farm-to-fork” tracking system for monitoring the country’s food supply

Now, the potential benefits of NAIS are fairly obvious in theory: if, say, a diseased cow is detected at a large industrial slaughterhouse, where cows are being herded in from all over the country, its ID number could be entered into a computer, and by accessing the NAIS database, the cow’s provenance---and the source of the disease----could be traced fairly quickly. This in turn would allow USDA to identify other cows that occupied the same premises, with the idea of isolating cows that might have been exposed to the disease from other members of the herd. It’s a basic “rapid response” mechanism that in theory should minimize mass outbreaks of animal diseases, prevent their spread, and virtually eliminate the chance that an animal-borne illness such as brucellosis or mad-cow disease will find its way into the food supply. Farmers and ranchers lose fewer animals and get access to foreign markets that have heretofore embargoed uninspected US meats; slaughterhouse workers’ risk of contracting potentially fatal diseases is minimized; and consumers get safe, wholesome, worry-free meat on their table. Win-win for everyone, right?

Not exactly. First, consider the costs. Small-scale ranchers, who only sell off parts of their herd every year, would need to register and tag individual animals, while large-scale industrial producers, whose animals proceed en masse from field to slaughterhouse as part of a lot, would only need to pay one registration fee for an entire herd, which could be hundreds or even thousands of animals. Needless to say, this is a potentially huge cost savings for corporate ranchers and an equally huge expenditure for small-scale producers, not to mention the per-head competitive disadvantage that small producers would face when pricing their goods for market. And either way, it would be very, very costly---as much as six bucks a head on average, according to recent studies.

Then there’s the issue of compliance: Under the terms of NAIS, all “incidents” mentioned above must be reported to USDA within 24 hours with no exceptions; failure to comply can bring fines of up to $1,000 a day per incident, and failing to register one’s premises or animals brings similar penalties. In addition, repeat offenders could conceivably have their livestock, and possibly their farms, subject to federal seizure (the Paulites are having a field day with this one). One can easily imagine the nightmare scenario this could pose for small farmers and ranchers with only a handful of employees trying to comply with these stipulations:

Rehoboth [Farm]'s Robert Hutchins says the administrative burden of having to inform the government every time an animal is born or leaves his farm would overwhelm his staff (which is to say, him, his wife and his kids) . . .

"We do 10,000 poultry a year," he said. "Trying to keep track of 10,000 poultry would be unimaginable for me. Under NAIS, if I'm not present when a hawk swoops down from the sky and takes off one of my laying hens, I'm subject to a financial penalty."

In addition, there are the obvious Constitutional issues involving privacy rights, property rights, and 10th Amendment states’ rights, which I won’t delve into deeply here, as well as religious issues (involving groups such as the Amish or Mennonites, who would have doctrinal difficulties with it). For all these reasons, it’s no surprise that the anti-NAIS coalition includes organic farmers and raw-milkers on the Left who see NAIS as a tool Big Ag can use to put them out of business, and assorted libertarian Randians and Paulites of the far Right who envision black helicopters hovering over the family farm.

Now, as long as the program remains voluntary in nature, none of this would be much cause for worry except for one detail: the Pork Producers Council, i.e., the official lobbying arm of the swine industry, is pushing Secretary Vilsack to make NAIS mandatory now. Why? Well, for one, the cost-effective “lot”-style method of herd management mentioned above is a fairly common practice in the swine industry, and that’s the most likely reason why they're lobbying for it---from the industry's perspective, it's a manageable cost. There’s another obvious reason too, which I’ll get to in a moment.

But the biggest problem with NAIS is the one that’s most obvious: it does absolutely nothing to address the root cause of tainted meat---namely, disease. And as anyone who has studied this subject knows, the primary causes ---in some cases, the only causes---of livestock diseases that pose a threat to human beings are (1) what the animals are fed, and (2) the conditions in which they live. Eliminate the toxins and the unsanitary habitat, and the problem of foodborne disease is largely solved. Bovine spongiform disease didn’t require a bureaucratic monstrosity like NAIS to be all but eradicated as a health threat---all it took were some studies to identify the cause (bone meal and blood meal in cattle feed) and simple legislation to remedy it. (Ban those ingredients.) Presto! No more cases of mad-cow disease in the USA since 1998. Hoof-and-mouth and trichinosis in swine have been rendered virtually extinct by the same legislative processes, and by the simple changes in farming techniques that accompany them.

Now we have another potential problem looming on the horizon, which I blogged about the other day: MSRA in hogs. Since MSRA is an antibiotic-resistant infection, which kills more Americans each year than AIDS, what’s the most likely cause of it? Riiiight, the insane overuse of antibiotics in hog feed, coupled with too many hogs confined in too small a space, which facilitates the spread of the disease. And that’s likely why the Pork Producers are hammering Vilsack to make NAIS mandatory---because the cost of compliance will be a bargain compared to the costs the pork producers are likely to incur if they are required by law to discontinue the use of antibotics in feedstocks; I haven’t seen a cost-benefit analysis on the subject, but I’m guessing someone in the council has figured out that slaughtering off a few thousands sick pigs each year will be a lot less costly than raising hogs on natural feed, in less crowded confines, for much longer (read: less profitable) lifespans and on greater (read: more expensive) acreage of land.

Believe it or not, NAIS is only the tip of the iceberg----for the more I delved into the subject, the more I became aware of a whole raft of federal food safety laws—nearly all of them terrible, and nearly all of them devastating to small-scale farms and ranches practicing sustainable techniques of food production---that are working their way through the legislative pipeline in Washington today. I’ll discuss them in greater detail in a future post.

---Vitelius

For those folks who wondered whether Obama's election would put lefty TV hosts like Stewart and Olbermann out of business, rest assured: as long as Glenn Beck has a job somewhere, Colbert will remain must-see viewing.

---Vitelius

Credit where due today---John McCain is still crusading for a pardon for Jack Johnson, the legendary heavyweight champion who was convicted, and served a year in Leavenworth, for violating the Mann Act of 1910. Such a pardon is, like, decades overdue, but the Baron’s got an even better idea: Considering the racist hysteria that gave birth to that repugnant piece of legislation, how about a blanket pardon for everyone who was ever convicted under the Mann Act?

Jack Johnson, it may be recalled, was convicted in federal court of transporting a white woman across state lines “for immoral purposes” who happened to be his wife.

---Vitelius

Why we fight in South Vietnam Afghanistan. (H/t Attaturk.)

---Vitelius

Let's Make the Food Turn Black

The Depression is over. The Depression hasn't arrived. Who the heck can tell anymore? So apropos of nothing, a break from the usual doom and gloom. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, seppie nere is squid ink. It's sold in speciality-food stores in portion-sized packets, and is usually used as part of a sauce for pasta, risotto or polenta. Popular in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region of Italy around Venice, it imparts any dish with a thick, creamy texture and a slightly briny aftertaste. On the subject, please click here to make a donation for the victims of the tragic earthquake in Abruzzo today.)

RISOTTO IN SEPPIE NERE

For the Seppie Nere:
1 generous tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced into 1/8-inch half-rings
1 medium bell pepper, roasted, peeled, cored and seeded, cut lenthwise into 1/8-in strips
2 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 lb squid tube and tentacles, cleaned and rinsed, tubes cut crosswise into 1-inch rings
2 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 packet seppie nere, approximately 4 grams
1 thyme sprig
Salt and pepper to taste

For the risotto:
3 1/2 cups best quality chicken or vegetable stock
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup ham or prosciutto, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1/2 head radicchio, washed, cored, cut in half lengthwise and crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
1 cup arborio rice
Chopped Italian parsley and lemon zest for garnish

In a large saucepot over medium heat, add 1 tbsp oil and bring up to heat. Add the onion slices and cook until golden brown, 5 minutes. Add the roasted pepper and cook 2 minutes more. Add the garlic and cook until it gives off its aroma, 1 minute. Add the squid and tomato paste; stir thoroughly to combine. Add the white wine and seppie nere, then season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then cover loosely and turn the heat down to a mild simmer. Continue to cook, lid slightly ajar, until the squid are tender and nearly all of the liquid has evaporated from the pot, 50 to 60 minutes.

Thirty minutes before serving, heat the chicken stock in a medium saucepot until hot; keep warm over low heat. Add the remaining olive oil to a large saute pan over medium heat. Then add the ham and cook, stirring occasionally, until the ham has started to caramelize, 5 minutes. Add the radicchio and stir to combine. Cook until the strips have started to wilt, 3 minutes. Add the arborio rice and stir until the rice has absorbed all the liquids in the pan, 3 minutes. Add 1 cup of the hot stock to the pan and stir to combine. Turn down the heat to medium low and continue to stir, adding more stock, half a cup at a time, until the rice can no longer absorb any more liquid and has developed a thick and soupy consistency, approximately 20 minutes. The rice should taste slightly al dente by now.

Pour of the contents of the saucepot into the risotto, stirring throughly to combine. Continue to cook 2 to 3 minutes more, until any excess moisture has evaporated from the pan. Cover the saute pan and turn off the heat. Wait 1 minute before removing the lid.

Mound a generous portion of the risotto into the middle of a wide-rimmed soup bowl. Garnish with the parsley and lemon zest. Serve hot. Serves 4 as an opening course, 2 as a main.

---Vitelius

Another (Less-Than) Humble Request

Dear Mr. President, please make it stop fire this two-timing asshat.

Back in 2002, a new employee of Harvard University's endowment manager named Iris Mack wrote a letter to the school's president, Lawrence Summers, that would ultimately get her fired.

In the letter, dated May 12 of that year, Mack told Summers that she was "deeply troubled and surprised" by things she had seen in her new job as a quantitative analyst at Harvard Management Co.

She would go on to say, in later e-mails and conversations, that she felt the endowment was taking on too much risk in derivatives investments, and that she suspected some of her colleagues were engaging in insider trading, according to a separate letter written by her lawyer that summarized the correspondence.

On July 2 Mack was fired. But six years later, the kinds of investments she allegedly warned about did blow up on Harvard. The endowment plunged 22 percent last summer, in part due to the collapse of the credit markets. As a result, the school is cutting costs and under criticism that it took on too much risk in its investment portfolio.

Mack, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from Harvard, had been with Harvard Management for just four months when she approached Summers. She asked him to keep her communications confidential, or risk making her life "a living hell."

Well, did he? No.

But on July 1, Mack was called into a meeting by her boss, Jack Meyer, then the chief of Harvard Management.

The next day Meyer fired her, according to the letter from her attorney, Jonathan Margolis, a copy of which was obtained by the Globe. Meyer told Mack that she was fired for making "baseless allegations against HMC to individuals outside of HMC," according to the Margolis letter.

Fire Larry Summers. Fire. Him. Now. Your pal, though not for much longer if you don't get rid of him,

---Vitelius

(H/t Ritholtz.)

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

March 3: Obama the radical has destroyed this economy.

April 2: The Depression is over. Obama has saved us.

I would really be getting worried by now if my head didn't hurt so much. (H/t Victor B.)

---Vitelius

Gotta-Read of The Day Next Five Years

If you haven't visited David Neiwert's site yet, I'd suggest daily viewing for the foreseeable future. Dave's field of study is, unfortunately, more timely and relevant now than ever. And I fear, like many of us, that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg that's heading straight at us. I ordered up a copy of his book this morning. I'll share a review down the road.

---Vitelius

Blackmailers

And that's the polite term for people like these:

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said yesterday.

Executives from the Times Co. and Globe made the demands Thursday morning in an approximately 90-minute meeting with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, union officials said. The possible concessions include pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company, and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees now enjoyed by some veteran employees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union, which represents more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business office employees.

The concessions will be negotiated individually with each of the unions, said Totten and Ralph Giallanella, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 259, which represents about 200 drivers who deliver the newspaper.

"We all know the newspaper industry is going through great transition and loss,"' said Giallanella. "The ad revenues have fallen off the cliff. Just based on everything that's going on around the country, they're serious."

Word to Globe employees: you need some savvier union bosses than that guy. Yes, advertising revenues are down at the Globe, and at the Times, and at virtually every other major metropolitan daily and newsweekly. And yes, your parent company reported a $50 million operating loss last year. And you know what else? It's not your fault.

It's no big secret that newspaper advertising revenues, and print ad revenues in general, have been in gradual decline for years. Let's take a look at just one sales metric, which has historically comprised a significant percentage of print-publishing revenues:

In fact, print and classified revenues have declined nearly every year since 2000. Meanwhile, what changes did the New York Times Company make to its business model to adapt to the changing times?

January 1, 2003: The company completed its purchase of The Washington Post's 50 percent interest in the International Herald Tribune for $65 million. The Times Company, which had owned 50 percent of the IHT, became the sole owner.

March 18, 2005: The company acquired About.com, a leading online provider of consumer information, for $410 million.

August 25, 2006: The company acquired Baseline Studio Systems, a leading online database and research service for information on the film and television industries for $35 million.

November 19, 2007: The company staged a gala opening after relocating its headquarters from its previous address, at 229 West 43rd Street, to The New York Times Building, at 620 Eighth Avenue, on the west side of Times Square . . . The New York Times Co. paid more than $600 million for its share of the building, in 2007.

That's over $1.1 billion in acquisitions and expenditures while advertising revenues gradually declined. And the reaction of the markets to all these mergers and acquisitions?

[In] 2008, Harbinger Capital and Firebrand Partners, bought 19 percent of The Times. On September 10, 2008, it was reported that Carlos Slim, one of the world's wealthiest men, had acquired a 6.4 percent stake for $120 million. These moves put pressure on the company, whose advertising and circulation have faltered recently, to improve its return to shareholders.

And what was happening at the same time that all this private equity was being injected into the company?

In July [2008], the most recent month for which figures are available, The New York Times posted an ad sales decline of 15.3 per cent; at the regional papers, the figure was almost one-quarter. The New York Times made its first ever redundancies in the newsroom this year, and last week said it was outsourcing its distribution business, with the loss of 550 more jobs.

Uh oh. I think you know where this is heading. Revenues dropping? Need to pay off the creditors? Borrow more money:

On January 19, 2009, the Times Co. announced that it had accepted a $250 million loan from Slim. Slim will receive a 14 percent interest rate and warrants convertible into Times Company shares on the loan.

Let's review: Steady declines in revenues. Costly acquisitions. Increasing amounts of leverage from outside investors, who have lost hundreds of millions on their initial buy-ins. Massive fixed interest payments that must be extracted from declining yearly revenues. Put them all together, and what do you get?

The newspaper is currently over one billion dollars in debt.

Bingo! The same exact model of incompetent mismanagement that has spelled fiscal disaster for one newspaper after another across the country. Which begs some questions in retrospect:

I wonder how many members of the Boston Newspaper Guild were asked whether they approved of the purchase of About.com, which, as anyone who ever tried to use it in the earliest days of the decade could tell you, was a $400 million shell property? How many Teamsters got to vote in the election to spend $600 million on a new corporate high-rise, designed by Renzo Piano? How many delivery drivers and pre-press operators got the chance to approve a VC bailout package with extortion-level interest payments?

But now these same people are being told that if they're not willing to take mandatory pay cuts, surrender their pensions, and perform sundry other acts of atonement so a bunch of guys in suits on Wall Street and at 620 8th Avenue don't have to own up to their own bad business decisions, they will all lose their jobs.

Here's a novel suggestion to the Globe's union chiefs: Tell your corporate overlords to go fuck themselves. What the Times is doing right now is typical of the kind of posturing that people in boardrooms do all the time when they want to impress shareholders and creditors that yes, indeed, we're serious about keeping our margins at 25 percent, and yes, we'll be able to make the next interest payment, and no, we're not in danger of defaulting. Which I am guessing, the Times quite nearly is. A big company like the Times won't generally take huge loans with such onerous interest rates unless it's in serious need of cash right away.

Look at it this way: if the Times were going to shut down your paper, they would have already made the decision to do so. So why haven't they? Because you are still profitable, and they desperately need your revenue streams---more than anything right now---so if they're going to ask you to give up wages and benefits to maintain an unsustainable 25-percent company-wide profit margin to keep Carlos Slim content for the next fiscal quarter, make them pay for the privilege. Very few publishing companies are as heavily unionized as the Times is. Most aren't unionized at all. The Times is a weakened and heavily leveraged company. Try flexing your muscle just a little bit, and see what happens. My guess is, they'll find some money, somewhere, somehow, and come back to the table with some concessions like more generous buyouts, or grandfather clauses for current employees, or deferred benefits packages for new hires. But you'll never find out if you don't give it a try. One thing's certain---if you don't push back, these bastards will only continue to bleed your members with more layoffs and cost-cuts, and still more demands for concessions. And in the end, since you'll only be rewarding the same bad actors who will keep pursuing the same worst practices, you will only be postponing the inevitable. Just ask any union auto worker.

---Vitelius

A Humble Request

Dear Mr. President, please make it stop.

Oh, and while you're at it, this too. Your pal,

---Vitelius

Feeding The Beast

Shorter Pat Leahy: Naughty children must never, ever be scolded.

"I am not interested in a panel comprised of partisans intent on advancing partisan conclusions," Leahy said. "I regret that Senate Republicans have approached this matter to date as partisans. That was not my intent or focus. Indeed, it will take bipartisan support in order to move this forward. I continue to talk about this prospect with others in Congress, and with outside groups and experts. I continue to call on Republicans to recognize that this is not about partisan politics. It is about being honest with ourselves as a country. We need to move forward together."

[Head/table.]

Jesus. This rationale is so full of crap, it is hard to know where to begin critiquing it. Of course the Republicans in Congress are going to use any kind of Truth Commission as a vehicle to advance a series of empty rhetorical talking points. That's all they know how to do anymore. And pardon me, "moving forward," to my way of thinking, is not the same thing as rolling over and merely acceding to the same group of zealots who frankly have been at war with the 20th Century, let alone the 21st, since Barry Goldwater's time. If we are to follow this line of reasoning to its conclusion, we must not pass reasonable climate-change legislation if Republicans wish to maintain that global warming is a hoax. We must not fund scientific endeavors to find cures for diseases if Republicans claim it's all an excuse to kill unborn babies. Barack Obama tried playing this "bipartisan" game with Republicans over the stimulus package, and we all know how well that went over.

Finally---and this is most maddening---there is no substantive political price to pay for instigating war crimes hearings. A clear majority of Pat Leahy's fellow citizens want investigations of some sort into allegations of Bush administration war crimes. It's that simple. The Republican Party as it exists in the halls of Congress today is not interested in "moving forward," Senator. People who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted on the backs of dinosaurs in Eden need to be dragged kicking and screaming by sane and rational adults.

Somebody tell Pat Leahy that Americans didn't elect their first African-American president last November and give Democrats big majorities in both houses of Congress because they wanted a bunch of Republican reactionaries to continue dictating the terms of government policy. Stop enabling these monsters and do your fucking job.

---Vitelius

Friday Night Omni-Thread

• Tasteless Analogies of the Day: Courtesy Bill Keller:

Keller was speaking at Stanford University to dedicate a new building for the campus newspaper--an event he likened to a "ribbon-cutting" for "a new Pontiac dealership."

The bombastic broadsheet editor went on to equate the keep-the-Times-alive movement to the cause of starving African refugees, saying, "Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause."

• Well, the recession didn't last long, now, did it? The Dow had another strong week, and folks on the Street couldn't be feeling more chipper:

"Everyone is in a buying mood," said Eric Ross, director of research at brokerage Canaccord Adams. "Everyone is feeling good. ... A lot of this is simply confidence."

• Meanwhile, a record number of Americans are now relying on food stamps to help feed their families.

• How to make half a billion a year while staying in a 15-percent income tax bracket? Get a gig like these guys have.

• We all know our 44th President is a smooth diplomat in public, but apparently he's not afraid to throw some good swift jabs behind closed doors:

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees---and, by extension, to themselves.

"These are complicated companies," one CEO said. Offered another: "We're competing for talent on an international market."

But President Barack Obama wasn't in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public's reaction to such explanations. "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that."

"My administration," the president added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

• This just in: All conservative political operatives are not---repeat, not---insane. It only seems that way sometimes.

• Lame Joke of The Day, courtesy of the Baron.

Q: What do you get when you cross Michelle Bachmann with Rush Limbaugh?

A: The Butthole Serfers.

Feel free to share.

---Vitelius

Protecting the Nation's Food Supply,One Bankrupted Small Farm at a Time

A couple of days ago, driving around town, I caught a few minutes of one of Thom Hartmann’s radio shows on Sirius, and he was interviewing some fella who was discussing some crazy National Animal ID System, a federal policy proposal to place electronic ID tags on (or in) every cow, pig, chicken and sheep that’s destined to find its way into America’s food supply for reasons ostensibly to do with food safety. Naturally, I assumed he was one of those nutbag conspiracists whom Hartmann often hosts---and jousts with---on his shows. But it soon became apparent that this guy was a perfectly sane and rational man---at least, he sounded that way over the airwaves---and this inspired me to do a little research on my own.

And wouldn’t you know, the guy was right. Better yet, the National Animal Identification System is not simply a proposal, it’s actually federal law, passed by (your Republican) Congress in 2005 and signed by President Bush. It’s largely flown under the public’s radar screen because the USDA has implemented it on a voluntary, not compulsory, basis up to now. But parts of NAIS have already found their way to the states, where they’re being enforced via USDA co-op funds. More troubling still, some industry groups are currently engaged in a concerted effort to make NAIS compulsory. (More later.)

The nuts-and-bolts work like this: Under NAIS, the rancher’s premises---his fields, feedlots, chicken coops or whatever---are registered into a database. Then each animal (or “groups of animals,” depending on ranching methodology) on the premises is given a unique ID number, via a microchip, earchip, DNA sample, retinal scan, or whatever. (No uniform ID system has yet been established.) Then a tracking system is set up, whereby the rancher or farmer monitors his herds, and files reports with USDA whenever certain “incidents" occur in the life of each animal---movements off premises, to the vet or a 4-H show, a calving, a purchase or sale, etc. The concept is to create a “farm-to-fork” tracking system for monitoring the country’s food supply

Now, the potential benefits of NAIS are fairly obvious in theory: if, say, a diseased cow is detected at a large industrial slaughterhouse, where cows are being herded in from all over the country, its ID number could be entered into a computer, and by accessing the NAIS database, the cow’s provenance---and the source of the disease----could be traced fairly quickly. This in turn would allow USDA to identify other cows that occupied the same premises, with the idea of isolating cows that might have been exposed to the disease from other members of the herd. It’s a basic “rapid response” mechanism that in theory should minimize mass outbreaks of animal diseases, prevent their spread, and virtually eliminate the chance that an animal-borne illness such as brucellosis or mad-cow disease will find its way into the food supply. Farmers and ranchers lose fewer animals and get access to foreign markets that have heretofore embargoed uninspected US meats; slaughterhouse workers’ risk of contracting potentially fatal diseases is minimized; and consumers get safe, wholesome, worry-free meat on their table. Win-win for everyone, right?

Not exactly. First, consider the costs. Small-scale ranchers, who only sell off parts of their herd every year, would need to register and tag individual animals, while large-scale industrial producers, whose animals proceed en masse from field to slaughterhouse as part of a lot, would only need to pay one registration fee for an entire herd, which could be hundreds or even thousands of animals. Needless to say, this is a potentially huge cost savings for corporate ranchers and an equally huge expenditure for small-scale producers, not to mention the per-head competitive disadvantage that small producers would face when pricing their goods for market. And either way, it would be very, very costly---as much as six bucks a head on average, according to recent studies.

Then there’s the issue of compliance: Under the terms of NAIS, all “incidents” mentioned above must be reported to USDA within 24 hours with no exceptions; failure to comply can bring fines of up to $1,000 a day per incident, and failing to register one’s premises or animals brings similar penalties. In addition, repeat offenders could conceivably have their livestock, and possibly their farms, subject to federal seizure (the Paulites are having a field day with this one). One can easily imagine the nightmare scenario this could pose for small farmers and ranchers with only a handful of employees trying to comply with these stipulations:

Rehoboth [Farm]'s Robert Hutchins says the administrative burden of having to inform the government every time an animal is born or leaves his farm would overwhelm his staff (which is to say, him, his wife and his kids) . . .

"We do 10,000 poultry a year," he said. "Trying to keep track of 10,000 poultry would be unimaginable for me. Under NAIS, if I'm not present when a hawk swoops down from the sky and takes off one of my laying hens, I'm subject to a financial penalty."

In addition, there are the obvious Constitutional issues involving privacy rights, property rights, and 10th Amendment states’ rights, which I won’t delve into deeply here, as well as religious issues (involving groups such as the Amish or Mennonites, who would have doctrinal difficulties with it). For all these reasons, it’s no surprise that the anti-NAIS coalition includes organic farmers and raw-milkers on the Left who see NAIS as a tool Big Ag can use to put them out of business, and assorted libertarian Randians and Paulites of the far Right who envision black helicopters hovering over the family farm.

Now, as long as the program remains voluntary in nature, none of this would be much cause for worry except for one detail: the Pork Producers Council, i.e., the official lobbying arm of the swine industry, is pushing Secretary Vilsack to make NAIS mandatory now. Why? Well, for one, the cost-effective “lot”-style method of herd management mentioned above is a fairly common practice in the swine industry, and that’s the most likely reason why they're lobbying for it---from the industry's perspective, it's a manageable cost. There’s another obvious reason too, which I’ll get to in a moment.

But the biggest problem with NAIS is the one that’s most obvious: it does absolutely nothing to address the root cause of tainted meat---namely, disease. And as anyone who has studied this subject knows, the primary causes ---in some cases, the only causes---of livestock diseases that pose a threat to human beings are (1) what the animals are fed, and (2) the conditions in which they live. Eliminate the toxins and the unsanitary habitat, and the problem of foodborne disease is largely solved. Bovine spongiform disease didn’t require a bureaucratic monstrosity like NAIS to be all but eradicated as a health threat---all it took were some studies to identify the cause (bone meal and blood meal in cattle feed) and simple legislation to remedy it. (Ban those ingredients.) Presto! No more cases of mad-cow disease in the USA since 1998. Hoof-and-mouth and trichinosis in swine have been rendered virtually extinct by the same legislative processes, and by the simple changes in farming techniques that accompany them.

Now we have another potential problem looming on the horizon, which I blogged about the other day: MSRA in hogs. Since MSRA is an antibiotic-resistant infection, which kills more Americans each year than AIDS, what’s the most likely cause of it? Riiiight, the insane overuse of antibiotics in hog feed, coupled with too many hogs confined in too small a space, which facilitates the spread of the disease. And that’s likely why the Pork Producers are hammering Vilsack to make NAIS mandatory---because the cost of compliance will be a bargain compared to the costs the pork producers are likely to incur if they are required by law to discontinue the use of antibotics in feedstocks; I haven’t seen a cost-benefit analysis on the subject, but I’m guessing someone in the council has figured out that slaughtering off a few thousands sick pigs each year will be a lot less costly than raising hogs on natural feed, in less crowded confines, for much longer (read: less profitable) lifespans and on greater (read: more expensive) acreage of land.

Believe it or not, NAIS is only the tip of the iceberg----for the more I delved into the subject, the more I became aware of a whole raft of federal food safety laws—nearly all of them terrible, and nearly all of them devastating to small-scale farms and ranches practicing sustainable techniques of food production---that are working their way through the legislative pipeline in Washington today. I’ll discuss them in greater detail in a future post.

---Vitelius

Performance Art We Can Believe In

For those folks who wondered whether Obama's election would put lefty TV hosts like Stewart and Olbermann out of business, rest assured: as long as Glenn Beck has a job somewhere, Colbert will remain must-see viewing.

---Vitelius

Manning Up

Credit where due today---John McCain is still crusading for a pardon for Jack Johnson, the legendary heavyweight champion who was convicted, and served a year in Leavenworth, for violating the Mann Act of 1910. Such a pardon is, like, decades overdue, but the Baron’s got an even better idea: Considering the racist hysteria that gave birth to that repugnant piece of legislation, how about a blanket pardon for everyone who was ever convicted under the Mann Act?

Jack Johnson, it may be recalled, was convicted in federal court of transporting a white woman across state lines “for immoral purposes” who happened to be his wife.

---Vitelius

Abuse We Can Believe In

Why we fight in South Vietnam Afghanistan. (H/t Attaturk.)

---Vitelius