Current events

I actually like The Journal Gazette's editorial this morning about City Council's annexation debate. It notes correctly that the actual debate is not about whether to annex 2.3 acres where a dentist wants to build an office complex but about the tax abatement he wants as a condition of the annexation. It even praises Republican Councilmen Tom Smith and Russ Jehl for raising questions on a broader scale:

So sad. The Times-Picaune is apparently disappearing as it currently exists, opting for mostly a Web presence and publishing a print edition just two or three times a week. Somebody who's been through that drill in Ann Arbor, Mich., offers advice on "What New Orleans Can Expect When Its Newspaper Goes Away":

It isn't "equal pay for equal work" in the military. Serving in combat speeds up your promotions and the accompanying salary boost, and women aren't allowed to serve in combat. A couple of female soldiers are in federal court asking that the ban be lifted:

This sounds about right:

President Obama, in speech after speech, proudly makes the following point: Although we inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression, we have generated net new jobs every month, and while we need to do more, we are going in the right direction.

The War on Coal is going very nicely, thank you, and it looks like Indiana will be one of the early  casualties:

Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a shocking drop in power sector coal consumption in the first quarter of 2012. Coal-fired power plants are now generating just 36 percent of U.S. electricity, versus 44.6 percent just one year ago. 

Who says there's nothing good about this lousy economy?

Traffic congestion dropped 30% last year from 2010 in the USA's 100 largest metropolitan areas, driven largely by higher gas prices and a spotty economic recovery, according to a new study by a Washington-state firm that tracks traffic flows.

If Warren Buffet is the smartest investor in America, why in the world is he buying up newspapers, which is supposed to be the dumbest investment in the world these days? The secret is that most of the 63 papers he now owns are in the 5,000-25,000 circulation range:

I was thinking about doing a post about how silly the fuss is over the percentage of babies born to "minority" parents being greater than those born to "majority" parents for the first time. But Ronald Bailey at reason.com did a much better job that I could:

So much in the news seems to be about events beyond our control -- the terrorists are coming! the national debt is crushing us! here comes the tornado -- duck quick! -- that it's nice once in a while to see a story about people who refuse to let adversity overwhelm them:

A fund-raising request from Citizens United, ostensibly over the signature of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has raised such a stink that Huckabee is disavowing it and Citizens United tried to back away. I thought it was pretty colorful, though, in a guttersnipe sort of way.

President Obama has surrounded himself with morally repugnant political whores with misshapen values and gutter-level ethics," the letter says.