Dress Blues

I was noticing the uniforms worm by the soldiers in attendence at President Obama's speech at West Point. Currently, the Army's equivalent of a suit is the Class A, or Dress Green uniform. It's the one you usually see them wearing when they testify before congress, for example. See below. (Click any image to enlarge.



At West Point for the speech they were all (except the cadets, who have their own uniform and wierd rank) wearing their Dress Blues, stepping it up a notch.



BTW, there is an even dressier uniform, called the Dress Mess uniform.

Who's sorry now? Senator Malepeai

Unfortunately, Democratic State Senator Edgar Malepeai (Pocatello) was arrested at 1:46 today for DUI.

Unintended consequences

Like New Jersey, Idaho limits the number of liquor licenses in a municipality, based on the population. As Atrios notes, this limit is one reason there are so many chain restaurants.

State law dictates that a municipality is entitled to one package store license per 7,500 people and a restaurant or bar consumption license for every 3,000 residents.

Faced with the tight population quotas, national chains like Applebee’s used larger wallets to win auctions or buy inactive licenses, driving up prices, said Tim Delaney, president of Delaney Restaurant Realty.

One consequence of having more chain restaurants is that there are fewer local ones. There are only so many dining out dollars to go around, obviously, and each dollar that goes to a chain is one that does not go to a local restaurant.

And of course, profits by chain restaurants go out of state, though admittedly not entirely, depending on the franchise setup. Still, even with a local franchise owner, the owner is sending money to corporate headquarters through franchise fees and mandatory purchasing of franchise inventory. So by limiting liquor licenses, the legislature is shifting money out of the state.

If the legislature is serious about "Buy Idaho," they'll abolish the liquor license limit and allow more local restaurateurs to have a go at it. This will help by lowering up front costs (don't have to cough up $250,000 for a license), and by allowing the restaurant to serve alcoholic beverages, which for some diners is part of the experience they seek when dining out. This should allow for more dining variety, should help grow local business, and should help lower prices at the restaurants because it won't have to pay for an expensive license.

Wayne Hoffman; wrong again

Wayne Hoffman's opinion in the Statesman on Sunday is one of his worst yet. First off, he's making the same tired Republican argument that every problem calls for tax cuts. Economy strong and tax revenue flowing? Need to cut taxes. Economy weak and tax revenue not flowing? Need to cut taxes.

There seems to be no issue, per Hoffman and his ilk, that will not benefit from tax cuts.

But this sentence was the corker.

Historically, cuts to national income tax rates have helped boost money flowing into the federal treasury.

Uh, Wayne, sorry, that's been tried at least twice, with disastrous results. It's known as supply-side economics, aka Reaganomics, aka voodoo economics.

Both Ronaldus Magnus and George Bush managed to cut taxes, and under both tax revenues tanked and the deficit ballooned. Reagan and Bush together added more to the national debt than all other presidents combined, and if not quite that much given the recent stimulus spending under Obama, then certainly before that stimulus spending.

Hoffman also wrote

Cuts at the state level should meet with similar and perhaps more dramatic results. (emphasis mine)

Now, I realize that I've made some unsupported assertions in this blog, but I'm just a blogger. Hoffman has a weekly opinion piece in the Statesman. Shouldn't he have to cite some precedent or some facts to support his assertions? Should? Based on what, Wayne?

I also take issue with him comparing our tax policies to those in Nevada and Wyoming. Nevada has gambling and Wyoming has mineral extraction taxes to offset income tax revenue. Idaho is not so blessed.

I do like one implied but probably unintended point he made. He says

Idaho's tax structure, then, can only be viewed as a real impediment to the state's efforts to get out of a recession.

Well, okay. Wayne's party has had a lock on power plenty long enough to fix this, and haven't. Any problems with our tax structure are squarely the fault of Idaho Republicans.

Wage disparity

Betsy Russell reports on the new ITD director's pay. Brian Ness will make $165,000 per year. He was making $118,000 in Michigan. The person he replaced, Pam Lowe, was making $143,000 annually. A spokesman for the ITD, Jeff Stratton, said that after accounting for the higher cost of living in Idaho, Ness' salary represents about a 10% increase in spending power.

Let's break this down a bit. $118,000 increased by 10% would add $11,800 per year. Let's round that to $12,000, add it to $118,000, and we get $130,000. So, if Ness got his 10% increase in Minnesota, he'd be making $130,000.

That $130,000 is equivalent to $165,000 in Idaho, per Stratton. The difference is, per Stratton, due to a 15% higher cost of living in Idaho, higher costs for insurance and for retirement plan contributions.

Let's take this to the level of a run of the mill State of Idaho employee. Half of $130,000 is $75,000, and half of that is $37,500. I'd say that is a decent number to use for comparison. It's about $18/hour. Next, half of $165,000 is $82,500, half of that is $41,250, or about $20/hour.

I don't have a huge point here, other than State employees aren't getting all that good a deal. To keep cutting benefits while freezing wages is to increase the disparity between what State of Idaho employees earn as compared to their counterparts in other states.

One thing that surprised me was, MinnesotaMichigan has a 15% lower cost of living. You know, MinnesotaMichigan, heavily unionized, more Democrats than Republicans (though the current Gov is a Republican), hard, cold, long winters, all that. Cheaper to live there than in Idaho. Who'd a thunk it?

Mom must be so proud

Meet the Poole sisters: Aubrey, 21, Rochelle, 20, and Tiffany, 18. The three were each recently arrested for Petite Theft. This gives a new meaning to the idea of family togetherness. And just in time for the holidays!

Cronyism and good ol' boy politics

The Statesman has a story about Lazy Y Ranch, LTD, settling a grazing dispute with the state of Idaho. Idaho's land board has refused to allow environmentalists to lease grazing lands, instead discriminating in favor of ranchers.

Hailey architect Jon Marvel, who I believe used to act alone but is now associated with the Western Watersheds Project, and Gordon Younger of the Lazy Y, would out bid ranchers for grazing leases. I'm working from memory so if I'm incorrect, please correct me in the comments, but I think I recall that Marvel's motivation was to bid up the lease to a more accurate market value, believing that the land board was allowing sweetheart deals to favored ranchers. In some cases, only one rancher would bid on the parcels. Some parcels had been leased to the same family for generations. Marvel also said that he wanted to rehabilitate the overgrazed and depleted land.

Younger "planned to manage the lands to restore what he called 'their degraded streams and wildlife habitats.'"

The settlement requires the state to revise the bidding rules. The Deputy Attorney, Clive Strong, who is well known for his expertise in natural resource issues, said this:

Idaho's new leasing rules will help create a level playing field for all parties interested in securing a lease - and help the state avoid costly lawsuits.

This is fascinating, for two reasons. One, he's admitting that the prior rules did not have a "level playing field." Two, he's acknowledging that the Land Board's discrimination is costly to the state. In this case the state is paying the Lazy Y $50,000 as part of the settlement.

One wonders how much more money the State of Idaho would have received for schools over the years if the leases had been competitively bid. One also wonders in how much better environmental shape the parcels would be, and how much better hunting and fishing would in the parcels, if the Board hadn't favored ranchers all these years. Cronyism and good ol' boy politics exact a price from the many in favor of the connected few.

Politicizing murder

I heard Senator Risch on the radio today calling for the prosecutors in the Fort Hood shooting case to add one more count of murder, from 13 to 14.

Apparently one of the victims was pregnant, and Risch wants a count for that. I don't know how far along the mother was.

Conservatives will applaud this, of course, which is why Risch is doing it. But geez, there are already 13 counts of murder; another one won't accomplish anything tangible. My main beef is that this is simply injecting politics into a tragic situation. And really, isn't going on the radio to announce this position simply political opportunism?

Isn't Risch just exploiting these murders for his own political gain?

Sparkling Sarah Palin

In conjunction with her book release, Sarah Palin has been going on a book tour. And, Newsweek put her on the cover of its magazine.

Newsweek chose the Runners World of Palin in running shorts for its cover, which is clearly a cheesecake type of photo. Oprah Winfrey asked Palin about the choice to use that picture, and Palin said she's thinks it's kind of cheesy.

I was thinking about that. Using a cheesecake photo of a woman in politics for its cover does seem a bit cheesy, at first. But, upon further reflection, I think it is the exact right photo.

Such a photo, of a powerful woman, highlights sexuality over any other trait, and probably tends to objectify the woman. But in Palin's case, her attractiveness is her defining trait, and is the reason she's where she's at.

Conservatives like her because she seems to share their views. But she's also liked because she's attractive. In fact, she doesn't have much going for her beyond attractiveness. She's certainly no policy wonk. She doesn't have much of a record of achievement (Governor of Alaska is obviously an achievement, but she underachieved in the position then quit early to cash in on, yes, her attractiveness.) She didn't even write her own book. She'll say any ol' thing that she thinks might work at the moment, truth be damned, and she says all kinds of nonsensical stuff (she justified her foreign policy experience in part by saying that there are places in Alaska from which you can see Russia). It's not her brain that got her where she is.

So in her case, using a picture of Palin in tight running shorts, really captured the essence of her.

Update: In thinking about this a bit more, it seems that some conservatives have a peculiar weakness for attractive females. And by that I mean, it's peculiar that the attractive female seems to be allowed to say anything, fact-based or not, and it's accepted and applauded. To wit: Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Michelle Bachmann. Malkin is the deepest thinker of that bunch, but that's like saying "You have good breath, for a dog."

Preying on the elderly and incompetent

Have a look at the "bill" I got in the mail today from Reader's Digest. As you can see, they're sending me my "FINAL NOTICE" giving me one last chance to "reinstate" the "terminated service" on my "lapsed account.

This pisses me off, because it's so dishonest and unscrupulous. Here's how the scam works.

They get your address from wherever, then start to send you the magazine. When the first one arrives, you might think "I didn't order this" or "Did I order this?" Either way, there's no bill with it so you don't worry about it. Then they send them monthly for quite a while, months, maybe even a year. After you've been getting them, and time passes, then they send a bill

Unless you're on the ball and paying attention, its pretty easy to think after a year of getting the mag that you probably wanted it in the first place. Maybe you've come to enjoy it, and if so, fine. You got a few free issues and now you can start paying.

But if you don't pay the bill, they start to send notices like the one below, peppered with references to your account, your terminated service, the preferred previous subscriber discount, and all that hooey, all designed to trick you into thinking you once wanted the mag.

This a problem because the elderly and infirm get these, and they often don't pay attention. It's easy for them to think, gee, I've been getting this, I'd better pay for it. That very thing happened to my sister.

Wait, there's more. One the back it says "We will continue your subscription each year with interruption until you tell us to stop." You're signing up for life if you ever send them any money.

And one more thing. It also says if you don't want to renew, "just write cancel on the bill and return it." Well, Reader's Digest bombards you with all kinds of magazines and books and offers. If you make the mistake of confirming your address to them, Katy bar the door because you will have opened the junk mail spigot wide open. I also believe they aggressively shop your information and sell it to other direct marketers.

And again, remember that elderly folks get this stuff and are especially susceptible to it. It's preying upon the weak among us, pure and simple. It ought to be illegal.

Here's the bill. Click to enlarge. I outlined various part in red boxes.