Scrivener.net

Lawyers claim half of 9/11 health and injury funds

Lawyers in the legal battle over Ground Zero worker compensation could bag up to half of the billions available to pay 9/11 recovery workers for toxic injuries.

Defense firms hired by the city to fight some 10,000 claims have already raked in close to $200 million, and about $75 million has been spent on administrative expenses.

[In addition to that] Lawyers for the workers -- who have yet to be paid -- stand to reap 30 percent to 40 percent of all settlements or judgments, based on their retainer agreements with World Trade Center responders...

At stake is a $1 billion taxpayer fund and as much as $3 billion in liability-insurance coverage, which includes the Port Authority's $600 million and policies held by WTC contractors.

The WTC Captive Insurance Co., a nonprofit governed by Mayor Bloomberg, has managed a $1 billion fund ... awarded by Congress to pay claims stemming from the Ground Zero cleanup.

The fund spent $275 million between 2004 and Dec. 31, 2009, on defense lawyers and administrative costs, records obtained by The Post show.

At the same time, the fund paid only a total of $320,000 to five workers with minor injuries....

"How do you justify earning $275 million without a settlement or trial?" asked ex-NYPD Detective John Walcott, who battled leukemia after working for months at Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills landfill, where debris was shipped and sifted... [NY Post]

Queens pols stiffed Katrina victims

It's the Big Sleazy. Devastated Hurricane Katrina survivors from New Orleans were left high and dry by a charity set up to help them by state Sen. Malcolm Smith and Rep. Gregory Meeks of Queens.

Only $1,392 of at least $31,000 raised to help Katrina families was paid, tax records show, and just about everybody involved with the charity -- including the two Democratic pols -- claim ignorance as to where the rest of the money went.

Meeks said in a statement that "the funds were utilized to help sustain displaced evacuees," but refused to provide further detail. He said money was administered by an unidentified director and that "a committee of community representatives functioned as advisers to the fund."

But three of those advisers said they had no idea whether cash was given out by the group ... Pamela Moore, chief-of-staff to Assemblywoman Barbara Clark, was listed as a member of the advisory board but said that it was a position in name only. "I never attended any board meetings," she said, adding that she did not know if board meetings were even held.

Clark, a Queens Democrat, said she ... helped set up a gospel concert that raised $11,210 after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. "We turned this money over to the congressman [Meeks]," Clark said. "I don't know exactly how it was given out."

A source familiar with the charity's operation and books in 2005 said he was unaware of any money going to Katrina victims that year, and called the failure to help victims "disgusting."... The organization raised at least $31,000 and perhaps more.

The money included a $10,000 donation from the Hindu Temple Society in Queens and $5,000 from the Rent Stabilization Association of New York. The rent group made the donation after its director received a letter from Smith asking to help displaced families.

The Rent Stabilization Association represents the landlord side in rent control regulation matters. So the politicians regulate the rental market ... then "ask" those they regulate to contribute to "charities" they set up ... then the money disappears without a trace.

Dare one think: "extortion".

Sen. Smith, through his spokesman, Austin Shafran, also washed his hands of any distribution of money to Katrina victims. "He wasn't involved in any of the day-to-day operations of the group," Shafran said.

The Post revealed last week that Sen. Smith attempted to direct at least $105,000 in pork-barrel money to New Direction, [a charity] whose mission was community development in the Far Rockaway area. Of that, the charity received $56,500 in state money from 2001 to 2006, according to the state Comptroller's Office. Most of those funds also are unaccounted for.

The charity's federal tax forms provide scant information on how it spent its money. No details were reported on who received grants and the only expenses listed were items such as funding for a senior appreciation week, basketball and double-dutch tournament -- plus $11,000 for "meals and entertainment."

The group also paid $9,004 in IRS penalties for late filing. [NY Post]

That $9,004 in penalties being paid with taxpayers' money ladled from the "pork barrel".

Last week's candidate for teacher of the year has competition!

Queens teacher on payroll despite knocking up student

Three strikes and he wasn't out.

At the beginning of his 32-year career as a math teacher in Queens, Francisco Olivares allegedly impregnated and married a 16-year-old girl he had met when she was a 13-year-old student at his Corona junior high, IS 61, The Post learned.

He sexually molested two 12-year-old pupils a decade later and another student four years after that, the city Department of Education charged.

But none of it keeps Olivares, 60, from collecting his $94,154 salary.

He hasn't set foot in a classroom in seven years since beating criminal and disciplinary charges. Chancellor Joel Klein keeps Olivares in a "rubber room," a district office where teachers accused of misconduct sit all day with nothing to do.

The DOE insists it can't get rid of him. "The department's hands are tied by state law and union rules," said spokeswoman Ann Forte...

The Queens district attorney charged [Olivares] with abusing two 12-year-old students in school, one in December 1988 and the other a month later. He showed one girl porn pictures and photographed her in suggestive poses with her pants down, the DA charged. Another accused him of rubbing against her from behind.

A jury found him guilty, but his conviction was reversed on appeal on technicalities.

The DOE held an administrative trial on the charges, but a panel of arbitrators voted 2-1 in favor of Olivares. They sent him back to IS 61.

He struck again, according to Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon, who recommended firing him. In 2002, Condon found Olivares had backed a girl against a wall and caressed her arms while urging her not to transfer, saying, "I'm becoming very fond of you."

After a hearing, an arbitrator let Olivares off with just a warning not to stand close to students.

This time, Klein refused to return Olivares to the classroom...

It was then that DOE officials dug up accusations from 1978 that Olivares had a sexual relationship with a former IS 61 student he had met when she was 13 -- and got her pregnant at 16, according to records filed in Manhattan Supreme Court in the 2004 suit.

Olivares, then 30, married the teen and falsified DOE forms to get her health insurance sooner, it was alleged...

Olivares' student-turned-wife, whose name is being withheld by The Post, could not be reached. Reached in Georgia, his daughter, now 29, said her parents "have been estranged for so many years."

"I try to keep in touch a few times a year," she said of her dad ... "My father can do his own defense."

After separating from his wife, Olivares, at age 50, fathered a son with a 23-year-old, records show...

[NY Post -- a rich day for stories from the Post.]

Seeing The Who's 65-year-old Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend perform "Teenage Wasteland" during the Super Bowl Half-Time Show brought to mind an image of the Soviet Red Army Chorus Alumni performing "The Internationale" at a Goldman Sachs Christmas party.

But maybe it's just me.

All football today...

[] Can the New Orleans Saints beat Peyton Manning & Six of His Friends (five if Freeney is injured) plus a bunch of bodies, in today's Super Bowl?

I mentioned before that the Colts' salary cap is divvied up thusly: Peyton Manning and six other players, $81.3 million (average $11.6 million each); the other 54 or so players on the roster, practice squad and reserve, $40.7 million (about $0.75 million each).

And this leads into another point. Peyton has been nearly as lucky as he has been good. Which is the formula for "all time great": very good and very fortunate.

How has he been so fortunate?

No other NFL team ever has been built around the personal abilities of one quarterback the way the Indianapolis Colts have been built around him.

Even the Colts defense is built around Peyton. Their General Manager Bill Polian has said they play the Tampa 2 defensive system because it has the lowest salary cap cost. The backfield players can be plugged in right out of the draft, then when they reach their free agent year and qualify for a good raise it is "good bye, good luck", draft someone else and plug him in. The only player they really have to pay serious money to in that scheme is the pass rusher, Dwight Freeney. So it's that much more money for Peyton and the handful of offensive players they pay very well to compliment him.

Peyton is a great QB, and it makes perfect sense to maximize what the team gets from him this way. But having a whole franchise built around you personally for your entire career to maximize what you can do ... that doesn't hurt your career stats!

Moreover, Peyton's never been injured (say: "Greg Cook") and he landed on a team with one of the league's best GM's, who knew how to build a top team around him. What if he'd landed on the Lions?

That's the combination that makes "great" -- very good and very fortunate both.


[] If you are in Miami and will be watching the Super Bowl on TV, or enjoy watching your team's home games on TV anywhere else, thank Richard Nixon!

The tale of the demise of the "home game blackout" is told at Pro Football Reference.com:

...By 1972, the Washington Redskins had become a pretty good team under George Allen, having made the playoffs the previous season for the first time in 26 years. They had also become the hot ticket in town, and games were regularly sold out.

It was one thing when the common man had to drive more than 75 miles outside of town to see a game that he couldn't get a ticket for. It was something else entirely in Washington, when congressmen and executives and even President Nixon, a devout football man, could not see a game on TV.

On Wednesday, December 20, 1972, just prior to the Redskins first home playoff game since the 1942 NFL Championship, Walter Cronkite reported that attorney general Kleindeinst had asked commissioner Rozelle to lift the blackout, and Rozelle had said no. As a result, Kleindeist was going to ask Congress to revisit the NFL's anti-trust exemption.

At Super Bowl VII in Los Angeles, Rozelle finally blinked and the NFL decided to lift the blackout of the Super Bowl on an "experimental basis" for the matchup between the Redskins and the undefeated Miami Dolphins. It was too little, too late for the NFL.... Before the 1973 season had kicked off, Congress passed Public Law 93-107, which eliminated the blackout of games in the home market so long as the game was sold out by 72 hours before game time.

Fast forward thirty-nine years later, and the NFL's thought process seems almost incomprehensible to the fans from a generation that have grown up with 239 cable channels and easy internet access. Who would have guessed that actually making your product widely available would have led to a dramatic increase in popularity over time?...

[] As mentioned here before, lifting that blackout gives you 11 minutes of action to enjoy -- along with an hour or so of very special commercials (probably more of them than that today).


[] Today's rival quarterbacks, Manning and Drew Brees, have their career performance levels looked at by Brian Burke.


[] Your team didn't make the Super Bowl? Well, if the team you root for in any sport hasn't won a title in at least 35 years, you may qualify as a sorry fan of one of the top 15 "officially tortured" teams in pro sports.


[] In the world of college football, now we know why USC was so eager to hire Lane Kiffin to run its football program. The man really gets the jump on the competition in recruiting!

13 year-old quarterback commits to USC.

The kid's name is David Sills. If he leads the Cleveland Browns to a Super Bowl victory in 2020, you heard of him here first.

The man writes...

More Failed Airthmetic [sic] at the WSJ

It's often said that everyone in Washington is so smart that they skipped directly from 2nd grade to 4th grade. This explains why so many people in top positions don't know third grade arithmetic.

The WSJ gave us another example of this lack of knowledge when it listed Medicare and Social Security as "the U.S.'s biggest budget busters." In fact, those of us who did sit through third grade know that Social Security actually is running an annual surplus. The amount of money it takes in each year on the designated Social Security tax and the interest it collects on its bonds exceeds what it pays out in benefits.

... Social Security is a money loser in the same way as IPOD is for Apple.

First, having looked at the offending WSJ piece -- always the responsible thing to do when one person is ranting about what another supposedly "said" -- we see something strange. The "failed arithmetic" Dean is ranting against is the Administration's, not the WSJ's. Here it is from the story...

Interest payments devour nearly one-tenth of federal revenues ... Spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consumes an additional 57%. The administration projects that those entitlement programs, as they are known, plus interest on the debt, will absorb 80% of all federal revenues by 2020.

So Dean seems really peeved that the Administration's arithmetic projects these as "budget busters" -- and the WSJ dared report it.

Moreover the year referenced is 2020, not today. He didn't notice?

And there are a bunch more strange things in this one little post:

1) "those of us who did sit through third grade know that Social Security actually is running an annual surplus".

Well, no. Those of us who are alert to facts know that Social Security actually is incurring a shortfall right now. Back when Dean was in third grade they may have projected we'd be running a surplus today, but events have happened since then.

2) Social Security's "interest it collects on its bonds" helps the federal budget? Hello? Who's paying this interest, the Germans or somebody? Dean couldn't possibly be talking about the interest that the Trust Fund credits to itself by bookkeeping entry, because what cash does that provide to help the federal budget??

By the way, these bonds are a liability of the US, part of the national debt. So "crediting interest" to them increases the national debt. That helps the budget?

3) The other side of the trust fund -- they must have taught this too in third grade -- is that all those bonds have to be paid down after circa 2017, with cash funds from the federal budget.

This is going to cost near 2 points of GDP of cash flow -- and the tax increase needed to cover this by itself will be the biggest tax increase since World War II. (Dwarfing the Clinton 1993 tax increase that passed by only one vote in the House and on a vice presidential tie-breaker in the Senate, when both chambers were solidly held by Democrats.)

That, of course, will be on top of all the other tax increases we'll need for Medicare and to service all the trillions of extra debt we'll be ladling on until then, as per this week's latest projections.

4) Social Security has a net unfunded liability on the order of $14 trillion and growing, says the Treasury.

If the iPod was running up an unfunded liability like that for Apple, do you think Steve Jobs would be bragging about how it was helping his budget?

Social Security a "budget buster"? Nah. Who could possibly think that?

But wait, there's more! Dean's bashing is based on people in Washington not being able to do arithmetic, but the WSJ is in New York ... He misspelled "arithmetic" in the post's title...

Maybe he had a third grader write this for him?

The Obama Administration's agenda has become "jobs, jobs, jobs, cut the deficit, jobs, cut the deficit, jobs, cut the deficit" ... since the populist rising of right-wing... independents and centrists in Massachusetts killed Obamacare. All you have to do is consider the State of the Union Address to see that.

These two priorities -- increase deficit spending to create jobs, while cutting deficits from their staggeringly high, unsustainable levels -- seem to be in self-evident conflict.

Yet Obama and some economists will tell you they aren't. They'll tell you: "increase deficits now to boost job creation until unemployment falls, then cut the deficit later."

Well ... maybe.

The problem is: Can we afford to increase deficits now, even to create jobs? Will it pay off for us? Or is it a short-sighted, cost-inefficient policy that for a small gain (before this fall's election) will make our bigger, long-term problem much worse, to our ultimate regret?

If the U.S. had only a modest national debt to begin with, sure, we could afford to add some billions to it to increase employment today -- even if in an inefficient manner.

But the US's debt, including its accrued unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security, already was well over $64 trillion going into 2009! And its future debt course is already so unsustainable that -- if it isn't addressed soon -- the credit rating of the US will start falling within the next several years, Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's all warn.

With such problems ahead, can we afford to make the future even worse for gains today? Of course, that depends on the size of the gains today compared to their cost.

The multi-trillion-dollar question: Can the government create jobs cost-efficiently to make the overall economic situation of the U.S better in total, instead of worse? This is an empirical matter, so let's look at some numbers.

[] The average wage in the US is about $42,000 per year, says the BLS.

[] Last year, the Obama Administration predicted that its $787 billion stimulus package would create 6.8 million "job years" of employment -- a cost of $115,735 per job year. That's almost three times the wage of the average job, its benefit to the employee.

[] Today -- as per Keith Hennessey quoting the White House on its new plans -- CBO says (.pdf) the "most effective way" to spur employment is a jobs tax credit that rewards employers for making new hires "at a cost of $111,000 to $200,000 ... per new employment-year". That is near triple-to-near quintuple the wage of the average job, the benefit to the hired employee.

And that is the most effective jobs creation policy -- the Administration's proposals include several other less effective programs.

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the Administration's and CBO's "job creation" estimates so far (in spite of the consistent over-optimism of their projections to date), and also assume that the jobs created on the whole pay as much as the average wage (even though pay for marginal workers is likely to be less.)

We can then say, conservatively, that the "jobs creation" proposals on the table today will cost taxpayers -- and add to the national debt -- at least three to five times the value of the jobs created to the workers who get them. (Probably more.)

Is paying three-to-five times the value of each job created a good deal? Can we afford it? How much of it can we afford?

You decide.

Why should you be?

The news is ...

Study: Cell phone bans don't reduce accidents

A new study suggests laws banning the use of hand-held devices while driving have not reduced the rate of accidents in three states and the District of Columbia.

In addition to the nation's capital, the report by the Highway Loss Data Institute reviews insurance claims in New York, Connecticut and California. It also compares the data to other areas that do not have cell phone bans.

"The laws aren't reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk," said Adrian Lund, president of the Highway Loss Data Institute... [CNN]

... with all the reports presenting this as a big mystery.

Yet this very blog in its earliest days, near five years back, pointed to a study giving a list of things that are more dangerous than using a cell phone while driving, including...

Rubbernecking (causing three times as many accidents as cell phones)
Fatigue (more than twice as many)
Looking at scenery, landmarks (twice as many)
Attention given to a child or other passenger (almost twice as many)
Adjusting a radio or changing a CD or tape recording...

While about as many accidents result from being distracted by: daydreaming, eating or drinking, adjusting vehicle controls, weather conditions, an insect or object hitting or entering the vehicle, reading a map or newspaper or something else ... among other things.

Moreover, "studies show that accidents involving cell phones relate primarily not to dialing or holding them but to the distraction caused by the phone conversation itself."

OK. So given both that cell phone use causes so few of all total accidents, and that in the accidents it is related to it is the distracting nature of the phone conversation itself, not the hand-held nature of the phone, that usually causes the accident ... just how many crashes would you expect to be averted by banning use of hand-held phones in cars?

Maybe ... too few to be measured?

If legislators really wanted to prevent distraction-caused accidents, the first things they should ban would be billboards (businesses actually making money by distracting drivers' eyes from the road), radios and CD players, food and drink, children...

Why pick on hand-held cell phones? Because this is what politicians do.

And you'd have known it from reading it here first, if you were reading here five years ago.

Quote...

A Queens teacher who collects a $100,000 salary for doing nothing spends time in a Department of Education "rubber room" working on his law practice and managing 12 real-estate properties worth an estimated $7.8 million...

Alan Rosenfeld hasn't set foot in a classroom for nearly a decade since he was accused in 2001 of making lewd comments to junior-high girls and "staring at their butts," yet the department still pays him handsomely for sitting on his own butt seven hours a day...

A hearing officer gave him a slap on the wrist -- a week off without pay -- for "conduct unbecoming a teacher." He was cleared to return to teaching. Instead, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has kept the scruffy 64-year-old in a Brooklyn rubber room, deeming him too dangerous to be near kids, officials said.

The DOE can't fire him. "We have to abide by the union contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

So Rosenfeld simply collects his $100,049 salary -- top scale for teachers -- plus full health benefits and the promise of a fat pension, about $82,000 a year if he were to retire today.

His pension will grow by $1,700 each year he remains. He could have retired at age 62, but he stays.

He has also accumulated about 435 unused sick days -- and will get paid for half of them when he retires. With city teachers trying to negotiate a 4 percent pay hike, Rosenfeld stands to get the raise.

All this largesse comes as Mayor Bloomberg threatens to cut 2,500 teachers to help close a $4 billion budget gap.

Meanwhile, the multimillionaire Rosenfeld lords over the rubber room, where he is the oldest and most veteran of 100 teachers. He reports promptly at 7:30 a.m. to the cavernous "reassignment center" on Chapel Street and spreads out at a table cluttered with used paper cups, plastic utensils, bags of food, news clippings and files...

A licensed attorney since 1973, Rosenfeld frequently talks on the phone to clients and other lawyers, insiders say.

"He's always working," one said. City rules forbid staffers to conduct business on DOE time.

He hung up when The Post reached him on his cellphone. Further calls to the cell got the greeting: "Hello, you have reached the law offices of Alan M. Rosenfeld."

Rosenfeld oversees a real-estate empire that includes family homes in Queens worth an estimated $7.8 million, according to city records. The Post found he holds the deeds to 12 properties, mostly one-, two- and three-family homes in Forest Hills, Rego Park and Glen Oaks...

The DOE responded to questions about Rosenfeld in a statement ... "This is not an ideal system, but given the realities of cumbersome state laws and the union contract, we need to balance our obligation to safeguard children with our legal obligation of fairness to teachers," it reads... [NY Post]

Prior coverage on this subject by The New Yorker and a NYC public school teacher.

NY pols stunned to learn Obama administration opposes funding for 9/11 health bill

The Obama administration stunned New York's delegation Thursday, dropping the bombshell news that it does not support funding the 9/11 health bill.

The state's two senators and 14 House members met with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just hours before President Obama implored in his speech to the nation for Congress to come together and deliver a government that delivers on its promises to the American people.

So the legislators were floored to learn the Democratic administration does not want to deliver for the tens of thousands of people who sacrificed after 9/11, and the untold numbers now getting sick.

"I was stunned — and very disappointed," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand... "To say the least, I was flabbergasted," said Staten Island Rep. Mike McMahon.

The 9/11 bill would spend about $11 billion over 30 years to care for the growing numbers of people getting sick from their service at Ground Zero, and to compensate families for their losses...

"She made it clear that the administration does not support any kind of funding mechanism that goes into the bill," said Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel. ..."They find money for everything else, they need to find money for this," Engel said.

"We were attacked because we're a symbol of our country." McMahon was furious that caring for the heroes of Sept. 11 would take a back seat to anything but military funding....

Victims and advocates of 9/11 families are similarly stunned. Lorie Van Auken, whose husband died on 9/11 and who supports the White House in its push to try the terrorists in New York, was crestfallen at the news.

"I thought that these people would be taken care of. I would have expected better from this administration," Van Auken said, adding that she thought it sends the wrong message to all of America's would-be heroes that the government won't be there for them.

"These people put their lives on the line to help people who live here and who were in danger, and now the government doesn't want to support them," Van Auken said. "What happens in the future when something else happens? Are people going to say, ‘No, sorry, I'm not going to help?'"

[NY Daily News]

Possibly Obama's people should not take their support in "blue states" such as New York and Massachusetts so for granted.

[] Having fumbled health care reform out of bounds, Obama's next play call is safely to the populist center of the field, sending the Justice Department out to tackle college football's Bowl Championship Series.

In a letter sent to Senator Orin Hatch of Utah -- who was upset that his undefeated University of Utah team didn't make the BCS last year (and who is a Republican, making this a fully bipartisan call) -- the Department writes...

"The administration shares your belief that the current lack of a college football national championship playoff with respect to the highest division of college football ... raises important questions affecting millions of fans, colleges and universities, players and other interested parties"... [AP]

So our nations' political leaders want to spend their efforts on college football, rather than on anything that matters. Every time I think how bad that is, I think it might be good.


[] Passing the time waiting for the Super Bowl to arrive, Football Outsiders is presenting a new "stat of the day" ... daily! For instance: the most unbalanced NFL teams in the last 17 years (as far back as their play-by-play data go):

Entirely Defense: 1998 San Diego Chargers, 2nd on defense, 30th on offense. With Ryan Leaf as your quarterback you can go 5-11 with the second-best defense in the league.

Entirely Offense: 2008 Denver Broncos, 2nd on offense, 31st on defense. This year, 2009, the Broncos hired Dick Nolan as their new defensive coordinator, he improved them to #7 -- the second greatest one-year improvement by any defense in those 17 years -- and they fired him.

Entirely Special Teams: 2005 Buffalo Bills, 1st on special teams, 30th on offense, 26th on defense. It was lonely out there on that punt coverage squad.

[] More on randomness in baseball pitching results. Data from "Pitch f/x cameras", which record the nature and location of every pitch in a game, indicate that pitchers throw as well when getting shelled by batters as when shutting them down.

Yes, some pitchers are better than others, as their full-season records show. But after the ball leaves the mound all the results come from the batter, umpire, fielders, and the luck of the bounce of the ball off the bat and around the field -- producing big random variance in results by inning and game.

(Oddly, fans seem to recognize the influence of luck with batters but not pitchers. If a batter goes 5 for 5, it's "his lucky day" -- nobody expects him to continue like that. But if a pitcher gives up 5 hits in a row, it's "get him out now, he's got nothing", everyone thinks he will continue that way. )

Phil Birnbaum expounds and links to the original research.


[] Have baseball's last 15 years really been "the era of the steroid-powered home run"? Maybe not so much.


[] Is Title IX hurting women's college sports?

The argument: Too many scholarships are given out to women relative to the level of talent. Women actually receive more scholarships than men -- for instance, in NCAA basketball there are 9,285 scholarships for women to only 7,177 for men; women's college teams have 15 scholarships, men's teams only 13 -- even though at the high school level only about 40% of athletes are women.

With a smaller pool of talented players and yet a larger number of scholarships per team, the few best women's college teams are able grab all the best players, while the talent is much more evenly spread out among men's teams.

Result: The University of Connecticut's women's basketball team has been ranked #1 for 18 months while winning 58 straight games -- during which time more than a dozen men's teams have risen to and fallen from the #1 ranking. And it is even worse in other sports. The longest undefeated streak in men's soccer is the University of Indiana's 46 games. In women's soccer, North Carolina set a record 103-game streak, then lost one, then went on another 101-game streak.

Do you know what they call a sport in which the general quality of play is poor, and a just few teams win everything in sight? "Boring." "Unpopular." "Unattended."


[] So this week we were able to see more of the NBA's Greg Ogden than the world needed to see. The old cell phone picture admiring one's full-frontal self while stepping out of the shower, then transmitted to a impress a "friend", and winding up on the web. (No, I'm not providing the link, my mother might read this.)

These kid pro athletes today make so much money that they now have professional personal business managers, personal trainers, personal nutritionists, and so on, all to protect their careers. Maybe they should start hiring professional personal stand-in Dads to smack 'em in the head when they are about to do something stupid.

Public Policy Polling asked "who do you trust" of TV news viewers, and discovered...

Americans do not trust the major tv news operations in the country -- except for Fox News.

Our newest survey looking at perceptions of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News finds Fox as the only one that more people say they trust than distrust -- 49% say they trust it to 37% who do not.

trust distrust net

Fox 49 37 +12
CNN 39 41 - 2
NBC 35 44 - 9
CBS 32 46 -14
ABC 31 46 -15

There is polarization in these results, not surprisingly. Republicans trust Fox more and Democrats trust the others more.

But it is the Independents who are key -- just as on election day. These are the swing voters who voted in Obama with a Democratic Congress in 2008 -- and who this year have turned sharply against Obama and the Democrats, voting for Brown by a 50 point (!) margin in Massachusetts.

Who do independent voters trust among the news networks? Nobody! (They ain't stupid!) But they distrust Fox a lot less than the others.

Independents
trust distrust net

Fox 41 44 -3
CNN 33 45 -12
CBS 22 51 -29
NBC 22 52 -30
ABC 21 53 -32

"Fox -- the least distrusted name in news!"

Draw your own conclusions.

It should get one, says Andrea Peyser.

After all, while the mainstream media slept, looked away, willfully buried its head, the Enquirer dug and dug to reveal the truth about one of the country's top politicians -- and potentially saved the nation great political trauma in the process. (Imagine if the Democrats had nominated Edwards, buying his whole line, and then inevitably the truth had come out.) And it did it practicing just the sort of journalism that Joe Pulitzer specialized in himself.

Enquiring minds are cheated out of Pulitzer

Old Joseph Pulitzer is doing flip-flops in his grave. The National Enquirer, which practices provocative journalism -- just like old Joe did -- is about to be mugged.

Investigative reporters toiling for the supermarket tabloid have pulled off a coup of epic proportions, saving this nation from the scoundrel who is John Edwards, and spurring an investigation that could land him in jail. But will the Enquirer win the Pulitzer Prize it so richly deserves?

Not in my lifetime...

The bombshell [reporting] should have won praise, prizes and the best possible restaurant tables for Enquirer types. Instead, the story was met with utter silence from the "mainstream" media. Until last week, when Edwards 'fessed up...

The journalistic establishment now has a chance to reward the Enquirer with its loftiest prize. It won't. The administrator of the Pulitzer board has already nuked the idea -- on a technicality.

He pointed out that, on its Web site, the Enquirer is called "the original celebrity entertainment magazine."

Magazines, you see, aren't eligible for Pulitzers.

This is a lame excuse, wrapped in jealousy.

The National Enquirer deserves accolades, not scorn ... It deserves a seat next to the snobs.

In the State of the Union address last night Obama turned populist on the budget, spending a lot of time promising to deliver more spending programs and tax cuts for the middle class and businesses ... while slashing the budget deficit to a sustainable level ... and not increasing taxes on anybody who isn't among "the rich" making over $200,000.

Of course it's obvious why he did, and why he'll keep on making promises this way until the November election, after the Massachusetts calamity. And it's not really any kind of "turn" in electoral tactics for him -- he did the same thing during his 2008 campaign (promising to fund universal health care with a tax cut).

But how realistic -- dare we say "honest"? -- is this combination of promises? Let's see...

Recent Tax Policy Center analysis shows how much taxes will have to increase, under different policy scenarios, just to get the deficit down to a sustainable 2% of GDP post-2015, from today's starting point (not counting the flotilla of new tax breaks and spending programs he just promised)...

The Congressional Budget Office projects an average deficit over the 2015-2019 period of ... 6 percent of GDP [if] Congress follows current policy and makes both the Bush tax cuts and AMT patches permanent as the president has proposed.

... that 6% clearly being unsustainable, since the economy when doing well grows an average of only 3% a year.

What if, keeping Obama's promise, the deficit is reduced to 2% of GDP using tax hikes that hit only persons making over $200,000?

Their rates would go up ... more than 150 percent under current policy. In other words, the top tax rate would return to the bad old days of 90 percent. Even if we go for the Administration’s more modest goals — start with current policy and aim for deficits averaging 3 percent of GDP — those top tax rates would have to more than double, taking the top rate over 75 percent.

And our estimates ignore behavioral response ... cranking the top rate up to 90 percent would lead to a massive reduction in taxable income and hence a lot less additional revenue than we found.

Ouch! But even so, Democrats prefer tax hikes to spending program cuts.

So what if to keep them happy Obama breaks his "tax" promise and increases everybody's taxes from current levels?

rates would have to jump nearly 50 percent. In other words, the 10 percent bracket would become nearly 15 percent and the 35 percent top rate would go to 52 percent.

Ugh ... a full 50% across-the-board income tax increase? I think even the left side of the left would gag on that.

(I'll mention for the record, "what if the Bush tax cuts are not renewed, and there are no more AMT fixes" -- though in reality that would be part of the second option above, a "tax increase on everybody from current policy". It requires another 15% tax increase for everyone on top, which again totals to the revenue-generating equivalent of the 50% across-the-board increase from current policy, only with the impact on who pays how much shifted around somewhat.)

Hey, what if we got rid of "tax breaks for the rich". Heck, get rid of tax breaks for everybody...

eliminating all itemized deductions ... wouldn’t yield enough revenue... Besides, wiping out popular deductions for home mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable contributions, and other expenses would never fly. We even looked at capping the tax-reducing value of itemized deductions to 15 percent, but that wouldn’t raise nearly enough under either current law or current policy. (Last year, Obama proposed a more lenient 28 percent cap.)

Conclusion: We've finally reached the point where no imaginable income tax increase(!) can do the job by itself.

Our simple exercise yields two important messages: We can’t balance the budget with income tax increases alone. We also have to cut spending and perhaps look for another revenue source as well. VAT, anyone?

Although nobody's discussing those options either. Instead, the politicians are still competing for votes by ladling out promises of more spending and more tax cuts for everybody except the over-$200k crowd.

Troubling thought: Has the budget deficit finally mathematically reached the "out of control spiral" point?

It's simple arithmetic that Obama can't come even anywhere close to meeting both his promises of (1) reducing annual deficits to sustainable deficits and (2) not increasing taxes on anybody but the over $200k-ers. By hard necessity, one's gotta go overboard -- probably both will.

Well ... his promises today may help get his fellow Democrats through the election this November, but they are still short-sighted even regarding his own self-interest (not to mention the country's).

In 2012 his own re-election campaign will be here, and he is going to be way, way off from delivering his promise on either the deficit or on taxes, if not both.

The problems he just had getting his health plan past the voters that resulted from his, "I'll negotiate it all on C-SPAN! No backroom deals!" broken promises may prove to be as nothing compared to the problems he'll have getting his own self past the voters then, in light of his "I'll slash the deficit and not raise taxes!" broken promises.

From Obama's State of the Union Address ...

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.

Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.

"Standing applause" ... except for the Supreme Court Justices who remain seated, with Justice Alito visibly mouthing something that seemed unapproving. [Video]

The New York Times explains:

The president appeared to have mischaracterized the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn restrictions on corporate-paid political commercials by suggesting that the decision invited political advertisements by foreign companies, too...

The majority opinion in the case, Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, specifically disavowed a verdict on the question....

Which means existing legislation on the point remains in effect. One might think a professional expert on the subject -- a professor of constitutional law, no less -- would know better.

It makes one wonder if there might be any other such partisan bull... misrepresentations in the speech.
~~

Update: Tom Maguire points to the question of whether or not Obama, as a non-tenure track, part-time lecturer, actually was a "professor" or not, discussed.

"So how'd the art class trip to the museum go?"

Woman's tear in Picasso slashes value by $65M

A woman who lost her balance and tore a hole in a Pablo Picasso painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art likely cut the $130 million painting's value in half, a top appraiser said yesterday.

Conservators said they will be able to fix the 6-inch tear in "The Actor" (above), but appraiser Gerard van Weyenbergh said the painting may never recover its value.

"It's a 50 percent loss of the value -- at least," van Weyenbergh said...

Museum officials would not identify the woman who fell into the painting... [NY Post]
~~

"Um, would this be covered by my homeowners' policy?"

Some other great "oopsies of the art world" via the AP.

How UFT torpedoed NY's shot at $700m

The city teachers union did its best to scuttle the state's application for $700 million in federal school aid by refusing to embrace reform measures required to compete for the funds, education authorities told The Post.

State officials confirmed that the United Federation of Teachers refused to sign a memo supporting the state's Race to the Top application because it would have allowed student test-score data to be used in the evaluation of the union's members.

The UFT also refused to agree to paying the best teachers extra to work in high-poverty schools, arguing that such a move smacked of merit pay.

And it sought to add obstacles for bouncing the lowest-performing teachers from the system, city officials said.

"What the union was proposing on issues of teacher evaluation and teacher compensation not only was not in accordance with the mandates of Race to the Top but would have damaged the state and the city's ability to win the $700 million award," Deputy Schools Chancellor John White said.

"Any statement that the teachers union was trying to satisfy the requirements of Race to the Top through an agreement with the state and the [city] Department of Education is a lie."

Well, that's plain enough. And here it comes:

UFT President Michael Mulgrew countered that the union had been looking to negotiate a memo with the city for weeks...

A copy of the UFT-signed memo contains language that runs counter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's push to have teachers evaluated based on how well their students perform.

It says twice that "test-score data cannot be used for teacher evaluation or individual compensation."... [NY Post]

Visit the Official Web Site.

"The story begins in 1957 in a garage in Hawthorne, NJ with two engineers, Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding. Marc and Al were trying to make a plastic wallpaper ...

"Surprisingly, this product didn’t take off. They realized, however..."

Who knew?

Another of the great advances of modern civilization made by accident.

Bad Russian rocketry makes spectacular Norwegian nights.


Remember Air America? That's all you can do about it now.


"A model of the history of human misery".


Keith Hennessey on Schrodinger’s Health Care Bill. UPDATE: Ooops, somebody peeked. It's dead.


Village Voice: "Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate." How the heck did Bush and the Republicans manage to reign supreme all those years with only 50 to 55 Senate seats?


There's 775 of me. How many of you are out there?


The difference between boys and girls, as revealed by Google searches.

[] If you watch the NFL's Jets - Colts AFC Championship game today, you'll really be watching the Jets versus Peyton Manning & Six of His Friends and a Bunch of Bodies...

The seven highest-paid Indianapolis Colts in 2009 have a combined $81.3 million cap cost -- which leaves the bottom 46 players on the active roster, eight practice-squad players and, say, estimated injured-reserve players to split the remaining estimated $40.7 million of the cap.

Salary-cap average of the relative Colt haves: $11,614,286.

Salary-cap average of the relative Colt have-nots: $678,333. [Peter King]

[] In the NFL, why do the #1 seeds so seldom reach the Super Bowl? The #1 teams from both AFC and NFC haven't met in the Big Game since 1993. This oddity's odds are explained at Pro Football Reference.com


[] How the balance between rushing and passing has shifted in the NFL over the decades is presented by Brian Burke.


[] The New York Yankees make more money than any other team in major league baseball -- but the Yankees' players extract their share of it. Players in the Yankees uniform get salaries about 40% larger than other players of comparable ability around major league baseball, says the Sports Economist.


[] Go watch the World Cup in relative safety, as long as nobody shoots you.

South Africa's authorities have condemned a London-based company which wants to sell stab-vests to visiting football fans during the World Cup....

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of violent crimes but the authorities say they will tighten security for the tournament.

Protektorvest, which currently sells its merchandise online, says there is a "high demand" for protective clothing and claim the stab-vests which cost close to $70 (£43) are the "No 1 personal protection for the World Cup 2010".

Fans can add their national flag to the vest, or slogans such as "Free hugs" or "Ole"... [BBC]

[] A new basketball league just for slow people who can't jump.

Jilted mistress proclaims love for exec ex with billboard

A fuming mistress catapulted retribution into a new orbit by plastering the country with billboards that show her nuzzling a married New York business honcho and adviser to President Obama, sources said.

The spurned squeeze, YaVaughnie Wilkins, went nuclear after she learned that Charles E. Phillips -- president of tech conglomerate Oracle and a member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- reconciled with his wife...

Three signs have popped up in the city, as well as one in Atlanta and one in San Francisco -- where Wilkins lives, Phillips owns a home and Oracle's world headquarters are located...

One of the giant signs, posted prominently at the corner of West 52nd Street and Broadway, near Times Square, declares "Charles & YaVaughnie," and shows the couple beaming. Referring to him by his initials, the three-story-tall ad proclaims, "You are my soulmate forever - cep."

But the billboards ... also invite the curious to go to a Web site that is a veritable shrine to Wilkins' ex-love. Featured on www.charlesphillipsandyavaughniewilkins.com are eight years' worth of photos of the pair canoodling around the world, dating to 2001 ... Also included are dozens of ticket stubs from concerts, movies and sporting events -- as well as Obama's inauguration...

There is also a huge collection of notes from Phillips. "You're all that matters to me," he coos in one. In another, he gushes, "I have never met a woman as fascinating as you. You are exactly what I've been looking and waiting for."...

Phillips who lives with his wife and their son, Chas, in an Upper West Side brownstone, said, "Oh, man," after The Post knocked on his door yesterday.... [NY Post]

Some things look more alluring from a distance.

I want a pony. You want a pony. Polls show that everybody wants a pony!

Let's build a New Permanent Majority by enacting Pony Reform!

OK, we're committed. Upon this foundation of popular reform we will build our power base...

Wait a moment: I want a dark pony. You want a light one. Megan wants a spotted one.

That pony looks like a damn mule.

This pony craps! Who's going to sweep that mess up???

It eats that much? Somebody is going to have to pay to keep it in a stable? PAY HOW DAMN MUCH???

Well, we can pass a law saying next year we'll cut what we spend on maintaining cows by 20% -- CBO scores that as covering 40% of the cost of Pony Reform. The cow farmers don't like that? Tell them we'll pass a separate bill later fixing it for them.

Who's holding out? Err... tell Ben Nelson, OK, the rest of us will pay the hay cost for Nebraska forever. Son of a...

Pony experts say stabling costs are going to shoot up with demand for ponies as everyone gets one?

Well, we can create a Stable Management Effectiveness Commission to reduce growth in stable costs to 2% below the rate of inflation annually in the future, without reducing quality, using ideas they'll come up with later. CBO will score that as covering growth in costs.

As to the rest of that cost today ... I'm not paying, I make under $250,000.

The unions just announced they need until the 23rd century to renegotiate their contracts to enable their workers to pay their share of the cost...

OK, OK, ... we'll apply the payroll tax to investment income, use it to pay for Ponies, but first run it through the Medicare Trust Fund to strengthen Medicare by putting more IOUs in it, total up all that benefit...

WHAT? Dumbass Massachusetts voters just voted *against* this??

How could they??? Aren't they of all people on our side?

Look at the polls, it's still true -- everybody wants a Pony!

So if the polls also say people don't want Pony Reform it has to be because the ignorant masses don't understand it. And people are lying about it. But everyone will like it after we give it to them.

I'll tell you what the damn problem is, we didn't go far enough, didn't create government-run stables to compete with the profiteers. I told you that. But our leaders sold out at the start to the damn corporate stable interests. What sort of reform is that? No wonder...

But this is still a lot better than nothing, we can fix it later. America has been waiting for Pony Reform for far too long, since Truman! We're almost there. Now's the time!

How craven are all these weasels who want to back down now.

We have to do what's right and force this thing through now for the good of the people, whether they want it or not...
~~~

Suggested by discussions at various blogs seen during the past day.