Supervalu in Trouble?

Things aren't going so well for Supervalu, apparently. Bloomberg reports that a change is gonna come:

Supervalu tumbled as much as 28 percent to $3.80 in extended trading yesterday after rising 2.7 percent to $5.29 at the close in New York. The Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based company’s shares have fallen 35 percent this year, putting it on course for a fifth straight annual drop.

The company, which last month announced layoffs in its Albertsons unit in California and Nevada, plans to accelerate price reductions and cut costs by an additional $250 million over the next two years, it said in a statement yesterday. It has retained Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Greenhill & Co. to review its options, it said.

What's happening?

“They’ve said it’s all about their ability to execute and get the prices right and get people in the stores, and then they come out and say they’re studying strategic options and suspending the dividend,” Joe Feldman, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group in New York, said by telephone. “It just makes people wonder ‘Well, geez, what is going on?’”

Walmart is going on, of course. The grocery business is tough because the margins are really thin. Walmart has significant advantages in supply chain and they don't pay union wages, either. Those are competitive advantages that make Supervalu's business model tough to sustain, especially in a crappy economy.

The smartest move that Walmart has made in recent years is introducing their "Neighborhood Market," which provide a smaller assortment than a typical big box, with a heavy assortment of food. These smaller footprint locations allow Walmart to compete in places where real estate is tougher to find. And because of the competitive advantages Walmart has in other parts of the business, Supervalu and other grocers are getting squeezed.

Things change in the world -- as I mentioned in another context earlier this week, there used to be A & P markets coast to coast. Not any more. I remember shopping at Red Owl when I was a kid. That's gone, too. Walmart may be gone as well someday.

Subject for Further Research

This article, which would suggest that CAGW or whatever it's called these days, isn't quite what it's claimed to be. Looks scholarly and everything, with lotsa graphs.

The Tony Award

Tony Petrangelo blogs for something called Left MN. Tony Petrangelo has a unique skill set. Most of his readers wouldn't know this, but among Tony Petrangelo's other skills, he:

• Is a world-class Parcheesi player
• Has grown forty different varieties of clematis
• Provided uncredited backup vocals on the 1971 easy listening smash "Don't Pull Your Love" by Hamilton, Joe, Frank & Reynolds, although some less charitable people suspect he actually was Reynolds
• Can emulate Lamont Cranston* by seeing what evil lurks in the heart of men

How do I know these things? Well, actually I don't. It certainly is possible that Tony Petrangelo is only an average Parcheesi player, or that he has never played the game at all. And based on the photo accompanying his blog post, it's actually likely that Tony Petrangelo wasn't even born in 1971. Truth be told, I don't know anything about Tony Petrangelo except that he blogs for Left MN.

Tony Petrangelo knows things about me, though. This I know because I read this post, in which Tony Petrangelo avers:

Of course, right-wing bloggers will distance themselves from overt expressions of bigotry while winking at it. In this case, the winking was done by Mark Heuring of Mr. Dilettante’s Neighborhood,

Tony Petrangelo knows that I'm winking because, to finish the quote:

who responded to a comment on his blog post that it “certainly is possible” that speakers at the meeting were agents provocateurs sent to make the opposition look bad.

Yeah, that responding to a comment on his blog post thing. It'll get ya every time.

Let's go back and provide a little context, shall we? Indeed, I wrote a post about a month ago concerning the vote that the St. Anthony City Council took that stopped, at least for now, a potential Islamic community center in the old Medtronic building on Old Highway 8, on the eastern edge of St. Anthony. Here is the original comment, from the estimable Night Writer:

IIRC, doesn't St. Anthony have a large percentage of university professors and such types? (I was looking into the demographics a few years ago when considering moving my mom up here). Their prejudice is generally much more subtle, if not any less virulent. Still, this is kind of an odd situation and one or two loud voices - especially the senstational ones - can skew the perception of a meeting. It kind of makes me wonder if the reactionary comments were from a true "islamophobe", or from an agent provacateur looking to lay some groundwork for a suit (which would require the Islamic community expected their application to be denied - and the story suggests that up until the meeting this was not the case).

If you read the comment in full, you see that Night Writer holds no brief for bigotry against the group trying to get the site. He merely wonders if it is possible that someone might be trying to set the stage for a lawsuit. That's a fair question, since there appears to be a lawsuit in the offing.

My response, in full:

I know there’s a certain percentage of U of M professors in St. Anthony, but it’s not a big part of the population. As for the agent provocateur idea, that certainly is possible. The population in St. Anthony skews significantly older, since a lot of people who live there have been there for a very long time, although you are starting to see some churn.

It certainly is possible. Maybe not likely, but possible. I don't know the motivations of those who spoke out against the Islamic Center. Having not reached the level of satori** that Tony Petrangelo apparently has, I don't know what evil lurks in the heart of men.

Tony Petrangelo does, though. And he offers me and his readers some advice:

I suggest that you look at the tape and ask yourself, “do these folks look and sound like CAIR plants?”

And the Pam Gellers of the world have taken notice.

The tape doesn't appear to be available at the link Tony Petrangelo provides any more. But for the sake of argument, let's stipulate that the folks who spoke out against the Islamic community center plan were (a) St. Anthony residents and (b) stone cold bigots, even though I don't know that to be true. Since Tony Petrangelo thinks so, that should be good enough for all of us. After all, it certainly is possible that Tony Petrangelo is correct.

There are a couple of points to be made here.

• I made several observations in the initial post, two of which are germane in this case. First, the St. Anthony City Council is responsible for its votes, its overall deportment and its behavior. It is not responsible for the statements that visitors make when the council is in session.
• Second, I support the Islamic community center, as you can see in the very post that Tony Petrangelo cites. I made two points about it. First:

The location for this Islamic center is not likely to be problematic for anyone. I drive by the facility every day during my commute and I would doubt that most St. Anthony residents would have even realized it was there if it weren't for the recent publicity.

         And,

It's often typical that religious congregations set up, at least initially, in non-traditional venues. I've attended religious services in old movie theaters and strip mall store fronts. You go where you can find space, so setting up shop in the basement of a suburban office building isn't particularly unusual.

         Perhaps that's winking at bigotry. It certainly is possible.

• I'm not sure what a CAIR plant would look like. Perhaps it looks like a clematis.
• What I do know is this -- no matter if Tony Petrangelo is a modern-day Lamont Cranston and knows the evil that lurks in the heart of men, or whether he's a world-class Parcheesi player or a master gardener, he took my blog post waaaaaaay out of context and gave it a meaning that it didn't have. I guess if you have satori, you can get by with that.
• As an aside, if you'll pardon my French, I really don't give a shit what Pam Geller thinks. I don't pay attention to her, don't link to her and I haven't quoted her work in nearly seven years of blogging. I usually hear about her when someone on the port side brings her name up, much in the same way that I learned about Orly Taitz a few years back. Geller's view of the case isn't relevant to the issue at hand. I have it on good authority that she's icky or something, though, and that I shouldn't pay any attention to her. For that reason alone, I am grateful that Tony Petrangelo takes on the task of monitoring the internet for intermittent bursts of Gellermania. It is good that he is willing to take one for the team that way.
• One last thing -- if you go back to my original post, make sure you read through the comments all the way to the end. Alert Twin Cities political blog readers will note that another portside blogger of note weighed in on the matter.

*I mean the Lamont Cranston who was the protagonist of the old radio show "The Shadow," not the local 70s era rock band that still appears periodically

**Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term meaning "enlightenment." I know the term not from any study of Buddhism, but rather from Kerouac's 1956 novel "Satori in Paris."

It's a stiff competition, but. . .

I have to believe that I have the dumbest "representative" in Congress. That would be our pal Betty McCollum, who is clapping like a harp seal about the Army's decision to pull out of Nascar:

The U.S. Army has announced it is pulling out of NASCAR sponsorships this year, fueling a proposal by Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum that would ban all military sponsorship of sports.

The Army cited budget concerns in its decision. But it will not head off debate on McCollum’s measure, which targets more than $70 million remaining in the Defense Department’s sports sponsorship programs for auto racing, bass fishing and ultimate fighting.

This has Betty all excited, of course:

"By ending its sponsorship of NASCAR, the Army made the right move to eliminate a wasteful program and protect taxpayer dollars – which has been my goal all along,” McCollum said. “Congress is facing a very difficult budget environment, and I want taxpayer dollars protected – even at the Pentagon. I applaud the Army’s decision to terminate its funding of NASCAR.  The Army now joins the Navy and Marine Corps in terminating its NASCAR partnership.”

If Betty were actually interested in protecting taxpayer dollars, her record would be very different than what it is, but we'll leave that aside for the moment.

The Army, like all branches of the military, has to advertise to gain recruits. The money "saved" by deep-sixing Nascar won't be returned to the treasury or the taxpayers, of course -- it will merely be spent in other ways, on other forms of advertising. Most likely it will be used instead for television ads on football games, so instead of subsidizing auto racing, it will simply be redirected to the television networks instead. This may be an improvement, but I'm not quite sure how. I doubt the Army's ad budget will be going to MSNBC.

I'm personally not a Nascar fan. Back in 2001, I decided that I should give it a try and watched the Daytona 500 in its entirety. My reward for that decision was seeing Dale Earnhardt smack into a wall and die at the end of the race. That was enough for me. Still, a whole lot of people enjoy it and there's no question that racing is a lucrative business -- many, many corporate sponsors see the value in putting their logos on the cars. If the Army thinks it can spend its taxpayer-supplied money better elsewhere, I'm fine with it.

Having said that, I'm certain that Betty McCollum has no clue on how the Army should direct its advertising budget. And I'm equally certain that with the myriad challenges our nation faces, this one is waaaay down the list.

I'm also certain that Tony Hernandez wouldn't waste his time on such nonsense, either.

Humpty Dumpty in the Secretary of State's Office

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all."

-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking-Glass."


The selfless public servant in the Secretary of State's office puts his thumb on the scale, yet again:

On Monday morning, supporters of the amendment to define marriage as strictly a union of a man and a woman joined with Republican lawmakers in asking the Minnesota Supreme Court to reverse Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's editing of the amendment's title.

Far from shrinking from the controversy, Ritchie, a Democrat, announced hours later that he also planned to change the title of the photo ID amendment, prompting renewed charges that he is using his nonpartisan office for political purposes.

He's already attempted to change the title of the gay marriage amendment, claiming he could because (a) Mark Dayton issued a meaningless veto of the amendment and (b) Attorney General Lori Swanson told him he could. He's apparently going to attempt to do the same thing to the photo ID amendment.

Here's what he did:

If Ritchie's changes remain intact, November voters would see a question on their ballots about "limiting ... marriage to opposite sex couples" rather than one about recognizing "marriage solely between one man and one woman."

They would also see a question titled "changes to in-person & absentee voting & voter registration; provisional ballots," which Ritchie picked when he cast aside the Legislature's preference of "photo identification required for voting."

Emphasis mine. We might have a duly elected legislature, but it can't be trusted to do the right thing, so Mark Ritchie will do it for them. And he'll have the Attorney General rubber stamp it for him. I suppose we should have global warming, because at this rate we'll be growing bananas in Minnesota any time now and we might as well go for verisimilitude.

So is there any recourse against this uncivil servant? Well, he's going to have to defend his actions in court. Unfortunately, he'll be in front of the always-compliant Minnesota Supreme Court.

This is outrageous, of course, but I'd be willing to let it slide, so long as when Ritchie's name next appears on the ballot in 2014, it reads as "Corrupt Incumbent Mark Ritchie."

The Trouble with Ribble

Reid Ribble is a freshman congressman who represents my old home district, the 8th District of Wisconsin. He's also being stalked by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The invaluable Wisconsin-based blogger Kevin Binversie has the details:

This appar­ently is Cong. Reid Ribble’s house.

It was posted on YouTube by the DCCC’s video tracker assigned by the com­mit­tee to watch the Con­gress­man and try to get embar­rass­ing remarks at pub­lic events.

THIS…isn’t a pub­lic event.

You can see the video at the link. It's 38 seconds long and shows the house at various angles. It's a nice house and appears to be on a lake, but it's hardly a palatial estate. It would be a boathouse for a lot of Democratic reps. But there's no reason for me to know whose house it is.

Binversie picks up his report from Politico, which explains the rationale, in a manner of speaking:

While most serious campaigns on both sides use campaign trackers — staffers whose job is to record on video every public appearance and statement by an opponent — House Democrats are taking it to another level. They’re now recording video of the homes of GOP congressmen and candidates and posting the raw footage on the Internet for all to see.

I have no issue with tracking public appearances. At no point during the course of this video do you see Cong. Ribble or anyone else. Just the house. What is the purpose?

Binversie, who worked on Ron Johnson's successful Senate campaign in the last cycle, has the same question:

As a for­mer polit­i­cal researcher, I under­stand the need for tracker footage.  It’s often there where you’re going to get things you never thought you might get else where in more…scripted parts of the cam­paign. (See: Macaca Moment, George Allen.)

But there ought to be a line.  What’s next, video of these guys drop­ping their kids off at school appear­ing under a DCCC — spon­sored account on YouTube?  We never went to this level in the John­son cam­paign, and frankly, I would have felt dirty if we did.

Frankly, video such as the one of the Rib­ble home crosses the line into stalk­ing, crim­i­nally or oth­er­wise.  As for fol­low­ing the man while he’s gro­cery shop­ping, what the hell was the point there?  Video of the guy buy­ing his Chee­rios have some polit­i­cal ben­e­fit I’ve never thought of before?

I think it's worth asking Jamie Wall, Ribble's opponent, what he thinks of this sort of behavior. In fact, I have -- I have sent an email expressing my concerns to his campaign and have offered the campaign a chance to respond. If Mr. Wall or his campaign responds to my request, I'll share the response here in full. But I'd also encourage anyone who reads this blog to ask Mr. Wall to make the same request that I've made -- to denounce this sort of thing in no uncertain terms. You can reach Mr. Wall's campaign at his website. If you do send a note, please be polite, but be firm. This sort of thing needs to stop.

He's got nothin'

A lot of people understand that Barack Obama is circling the drain and the desperation about that is getting almost palpable. You can always tell when such things are happening because the various think tank denizens start dusting off their white papers. Today we see the deep thoughts of Jonathan Rauch*:

The president's failure, so far, to show that he understands the scope of the economy's problems and knows how to fix them does not stem from having nothing to say: Investment in education, energy, innovation and infrastructure are reasonable things. But they are also slow-acting, small-bore stuff. Such talk does not include additional economic stimulus, an element that many economists, especially Democratic-leaning ones, consider crucial to prevent a double-dip recession. Nor does it deal realistically with long-term growth in spending.

So Obama should draw a map and send it to Capitol Hill in the form of a bill -- a president's strongest statement that he intends action. A big legislative proposal can frame the issue and paint Obama's intentions in bold colors.

So what's bold? Simpson-Bowles, baby!

1) Long-term fiscal retrenchment. The easiest and best way is to adopt the Simpson-Bowles deficit plan. The Simpson-Bowles commission's recommendations have been established as a credible bipartisan solution. Adopting it outright would signal that Obama is not playing partisan games and would redress the (justified) criticism that he has finessed the deficit. Not least, Simpson-Bowles compares favorably on grounds of balance, economic plausibility and public appeal with the budget of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which Romney endorsed.

There's nothing more bold than adopting the work of a commission that produced a series of recommendations that has been sitting around gathering dust for two years.

But there's more from our man Rauch:

2) Short-term economic stimulus. Republicans will howl about more spending. Let them. Stimulus measures make sense when unemployment is high and the world is teetering on the edge of a second recession. And provided they are coupled with credible long-term retrenchment, they are politically and economically defensible. Such measures have a further political advantage: Obama and the Democrats would be running on what they believe is the right answer, instead of running away from it.

"Provided they are coupled with credible long-term retrenchment," huh? Just like the last time! The stimulus that was supposed to be a one-time thing is now the baseline for budgeting in the Obama administration. And because the first stimulus worked so well, why not try it again, right?

But all good wonks have three ideas in their pocket, right. Back to Rauch:

3) A two-year debt-limit extension. Declare that another debt-limit fiasco is unacceptable and demand that the issue be taken off the table. Let Republicans explain why they want to hold a gun to the economy's head.

Now we're getting delusional. The campaign is about the government's spending and how effective it's been. So let's just let it ride for two more years. Very few people outside the Beltway pay attention to the particulars of the sausage making, so the business of "holding a gun to the economy's head" is just silly.

More importantly, none of this is bold, either. We've had dozens of commissions and the federal government has been doing the Keynesian fandango for the better part of 100 years now and here we sit. The ruminations of wise men and inside baseball won't move the needle.

Meanwhile, Obama is back with the same proposal he's made before:

 With a torpid job market and fragile economy threatening his re-election chances, President Obama is changing the subject to tax fairness, calling for a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000.

Bold, Mr. President. Even the loyal scribes at the New York Times aren't buying this:

But by calling for an extension for just a year, Obama hopes to make Republicans look obstructionist and unreasonable. 

And icky, too.

*Not to be confused with Jon Rauch, the hulking, tattooed pitcher who has labored for about half the teams in the major leagues.

Brand Management

From the "where are they now file," from a Canadian publication, yet (H/T Prof. Reynolds):

Oprah was the queen of all that she surveyed. She was regularly highlighted as one of the most, if not the most, influential persons in the United States. If she touted a book, it went to the top of the best seller lists. She waved a wand and the already famous were made more famous. And she was ardently “non-political.”

But four years ago, the House of Oprah made an epic decision: It chose to endorse Barack Obama. Oprah featured Obama on her show, with Michelle, and put the celebrated Oprah muscle to task for his campaign. It was a truly momentous event — the most powerful woman in entertainment endorsing a presidential candidate.

We are now four years on. And where are they now, Rex Murphy asks?

What of now? Well, something strange has happened. Oprah has lost her chi. She ended her long-time relationship with mainstream television and decided that she should have her own network. It is one of the very few examples of a person ordering her own self-exile. And the result is that she has simply ceased — in television terms — to be. I cannot recall a more precipitous drop in status, and in the influence status bestows, than Oprah’s almost complete fall from entertainment eminence.

Who speaks of Oprah now, save in valediction? Is she endorsing Obama this time? Who cares? 

Murphy has a theory:

Had her “fall” something to do with breaking her tradition of staying out of politics?  I think the answer is simpler than that: Fame is frail, celebrity is a bubble and the spotlight passes.

Yes. Certainly that is true. And if you have to search for Oprah's television channel on cable, you might not find it. You also might not be able to afford cable these days, either. But I think another Chicago-based African American crossover success understood something else:

“Republicans buy shoes, too,” [Michael] Jordan reportedly quipped to a friend on why he wouldn’t endorse a black Democratic candidate, Harvey Gantt, in a 1990 North Carolina Senate race against Republican Jesse Helms.

Yep. And any successful enterprise that wants to stay successful understands the importance of brand management. Sixty years ago, there was a Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company market in thousands of American cities, from coast to coast, over 16,000 in total at its peak. Nowadays, if you are outside of the New York metropolitan area, if hear the term "A & P" it's an even money bet that the person talking about it is referring to the short story by John Updike.

An Improvement in the Blogosphere

King David is back at it. Read early, read often.

Your Saturday Morning Reading Assignment Is

This article from the Economist, which provides a handy and infuriating synopsis of the now burgeoning scandal concerning LIBOR, or the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate.

I cannot even begin to explain how big a problem this is -- the LIBOR rate serves as the underpinning for untold billions of financial transactions worldwide. The LIBOR number was pretty much sacrosanct when I worked for B of A and the LIBOR was a component of nearly every deal we did with our customers. From the article:

What may still seem to many to be a parochial affair involving Barclays, a 300-year-old British bank, rigging an obscure number, is beginning to assume global significance. The number that the traders were toying with determines the prices that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings. It is used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines the global flow of billions of dollars each year. Yet it turns out to have been flawed.

Flawed isn't the right word for it. More:

In theory, LIBOR is supposed to be a pretty honest number because it is assumed, for a start, that banks play by the rules and give truthful estimates. The market is also sufficiently small that most banks are presumed to know what the others are doing. In reality, the system is rotten. First, it is based on banks’ estimates, rather than the actual prices at which banks have lent to or borrowed from one another. “There is no reporting of transactions, no one really knows what’s going on in the market,” says a former senior trader closely involved in setting LIBOR at a large bank. “You have this vast overhang of financial instruments that hang their own fixes off a rate that doesn’t actually exist.”

A second problem is that those involved in setting the rates have often had every incentive to lie, since their banks stood to profit or lose money depending on the level at which LIBOR was set each day. Worse still, transparency in the mechanism of setting rates may well have exacerbated the tendency to lie, rather than suppressed it. Banks that were weak would not have wanted to signal that fact widely in markets by submitting honest estimates of the high price they would have to pay to borrow, if they could borrow at all.

The term "swag number" is something I learned very early in my career. A swag number is a rough estimate that is used as a placeholder until you are able to determine the actual number that should be used in a formula. Generally a swag number is based on your knowledge of how things typically work, but should never be considered as reliable. If the reports are true, LIBOR was essentially a swag number, but with an added layer of duplicity baked in. This explains how it could "work" for so long even if its actual derivation weren't legitimate. You can base a lot of history and even an ostensibly plausible business plan on how things typically work, but in the end the numbers do come in and there has to be a reckoning.

Untangling this mess could be nearly impossible, since nearly every person who has taken out a loan or earned interest on any bank account has been touched by LIBOR. And there's at least some suggestion that the regulators who should have been policing the matter are complicit. From the article:

Confounding the issue is the question of whether Barclays had, or thought it had, the tacit support of both its regulator and the Bank of England (BoE). In notes taken by Mr Diamond, then the head of the investment-banking division of Barclays, of a call with Paul Tucker, then a senior official at the BoE, Mr Diamond recorded what was interpreted by some in the bank as a nudge and a wink from the central bank to fudge the numbers (see article). The next day the Barclays submissions to LIBOR were lower. This could be a crucial part of the bank’s defence.

Can you imagine this being the case? I certainly can. More:

The revelations also raise difficult questions for regulators. Mr Tucker’s involvement in the Barclays affair may harm his prospects of being appointed governor of the Bank of England, although he may well have a benign explanation for his comments (he is due to appear before parliament soon).

Another issue is the conflict central banks face, in times of systemic banking crises, between maintaining financial stability and allowing markets to operate transparently. Whether the BoE instructed Barclays to lower its submissions or not, regulators had a pretty clear motive for wanting lower LIBOR: British banks, in effect, were being shut out of the markets. The two hardest-hit banks, RBS and HBOS, were both far too big to fail, and higher LIBOR rates would have made the regulators’ job of supporting them more difficult.

This is worth remembering when you hear people claim that the answer is hiring more regulators. Regulators may be honest brokers or may not be. When I learn about things like this, I'm often reminded of the tragic wisdom from Jean Renoir's 1939 film "Rules of the Game," to wit:

The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has his reasons.

This is true. And while knowing that doesn't change anything, it's still worth learning the reasons. And that's why I'd recommend that you read the whole thing.

Train in Vain

Next verse, same as the first:

Carrying fewer passengers this year, Northstar commuter rail is slashing fares by as much as 25 percent in an attempt to attract new riders.

The fare reduction underscores the ongoing challenge the line -- now nearly three years old -- faces in persuading northwest suburban commuters to ride.

C'mon, Maple Grove! You need to do better! And step it up, Big Lake!

The report from the Star Tribune mentions another factor:

Ridership declined 2.8 percent through May of this year and is lagging even further behind expectations for 2012. Metro Transit officials blame it on a variety of factors, including the Twins' drawing fewer riders to Target Field, and say adjusting fares is part of the line's growing pains.

So part of the problem is the vagaries of a baseball team? Perhaps a few ads featuring current Twins sensation Darin Mastroianni could sway the fickle masses.

Actually, a better explanation is available:

"You're not looking at a market that was suited to this," said David Levinson, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

Yep. The same argument I've been making for a long time now. I know this is well-plowed ground, but let's go back to it for a moment. What's the problem? Well,

• The issue in the Twin Cities is that we have people coming from all directions to multiple destinations. We have two official downtowns and a de facto one on the 494 strip. We also have major corporations located throughout the suburbs. Many of the big medical device companies are located along 694 in the North Metro, while General Mills is on 169. United Health Group has facilities all over the west side of town. My office is in Burnsville. 3M is in Maplewood. A train that runs from Big Lake to downtown Minneapolis isn't especially useful to a lot of people.
• We have no geographical restrictions, either. Chicago sits on Lake Michigan. New York touches the ocean, as does San Francisco. We have rivers here and plenty of bridges, too. If you want to work in downtown Minneapolis, you might choose to live to the northwest. But you don't have any restrictions on where you live. You can't live on the northeast side of Chicago, because it doesn't exist. You can easily live northeast of downtown Minneapolis.

There will always be people who prefer to ride trains. There just aren't that many of them.

The Book I Read

Let's create a summer reading list. I'm going to list the following:

• The book I'm reading right now;
• A good book I've read recently; and
• A great book that I'd recommend to anyone.

The book I'm reading right now is Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, by Robert Kaplan. I've read one other book by Kaplan, Imperial Grunts, which was a fascinating look at the U.S. military. So far I like this book, although it's somewhat slow going.

A very good book I read recently is: Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, by Eric Metaxas. The title should be self-explanatory. I loved Metaxas's more recent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and while this one isn't as detailed as the Bonhoeffer book, it tells an important story very well.

The great book I always recommend is: The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence S. Ritter. The classic oral history from 1966 is about baseball but also about America at the turn of the century. Perhaps my favorite book of all.

Share your choices in the comment section!

I Don't Blame Obama

It's a good thing they don't name derechos:

More than 1 million homes and businesses in a swath from Indiana to Virginia remained without power on Wednesday, five days after deadly storms tore through the region.

The outage meant no July 4 Independence Day holiday for thousands of utility workers who scrambled to restore lingering power outages.

Much of the damage to the power grid was blamed on last weekend's rare "derecho," a big, powerful and long-lasting wind storm that blew from the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean.

Violent weekend storms and days of record heat have killed at least 23 people in the United States since Friday. Some died when trees fell on their homes and cars, and heat stroke killed others.

For the record, President Obama has nothing to do with this.

Hockey on the 4th of July

I like hockey but I don't follow it as closely as a lot of people 'round these parts, so I haven't written much about it over the years. Yesterday's news merits a mention, though:


Zach Parise and Ryan Suter have agreed to terms with the Wild.

The team landed the two biggest prizes in this year's NHL free-agent class this morning.

Both received 13-year, $98 million deals, according to people familiar with the terms.

"Not a bad day," said Wild forward Matt Cullen. "Unreal, unbelievable. Man, what a great day. Honestly, what a huge day for the organization, for the state."

Parise and Suter will form a star-studded tandem that will be expected to alter the fortunes of a franchise that has missed the playoffs four consecutive seasons.

It's big news in the NHL, a bit like what happened two years ago when LeBron James and Chris Bosh went to Miami, although Parise and Suter didn't need to have an hour-long ESPN special to celebrate their decision.

More important, it makes the Wild relevant again. The Wild had a pretty nice run in the playoffs back in 2003, but we're 10 years on from that and the team has been mostly a study in mediocrity ever since. The team has a beautiful arena in downtown St. Paul and has never charged anything less than top dollar for tickets, but I've had the sense that they have been too self-satisfied to shake things up. Yesterday they sent a message that they done with being complacent. Good for them -- now just hope that there isn't an offseason lockout again.

Deus ex machina and Independence Day

I've bashed David Brooks plenty over the years, but he and I are on the same page here:

Democracy is a contest between alternatives, not a deus ex machina stroke from the lords in black robes.

Which is the same point I made last week:

If we have learned nothing more from cases like Raich, or Kelo,  it's this:  you cannot rely on the Supreme Court to be a personal deus ex machina and save your ass from tyranny. You have to do it yourself, with the tools you have, which include your voice and your ballot. It's up to us to have our say. And you can do that in November. We have a Republic, if you can keep it. And one way to keep it is to go to the ballot box. So get to it.

We celebrate Independence Day because it was the formal beginning of our nation. The Founders didn't wait for someone else to solve their problems or to redress their grievances, let alone 9 people in black robes. We declared our independence, but only the sustained effort of many people guaranteed our independence. The job doesn't end when the declaration is signed. It only begins. And 236 years on, it continues.

Kittens, biscuits and the Star Tribune op/ed page

One of my favorite books is The Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam, which was published back in the 1970s. I've owned a paperback copy of the book for over 30 years and still look at it regularly, because it does an excellent job of explaining faulty thinking. In the book he uses a version of a classic fallacy:

A cat has its kittens in the oven
Biscuits come out of the oven
Kittens are biscuits

The analysis works beautifully as long as you accept the premises. And since ovens are used for baking, let's turn to some baked wind on the Star Tribune op/ed page, offered by one David M. Perlman:

Conservatives decry the liberal bias in the universities. It is true that most college professors are liberals, but I don't think it has anything to do with bias. It is because college professors are intelligent people, and intelligent people tend to be liberal.

And kittens are biscuits. But Perlman also has been reading his Thomas Frank:

I have had many conversations with colleagues about why so many people vote against their own best interests, and the only conclusion that is ever reached is that those people are swayed by emotional arguments, not by intelligent thought.

I for one am heartened that Perlman is around to tell me what my own best interests are. Take on the intelligent man's burden, Mr. Perlman! Mighty sporting of him. Perhaps some day I can have him over for a nice plate of biscuits.

A deserving pensioner

Here's a heartwarming story from Pennsylvania (H/T to the invaluable Kevin Binversie):

Former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky will likely receive his $58,898-a-year state pension while in prison, unless a bill stalled in Pennsylvania's senate finance committee is quickly passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.

The bill would prevent employees convicted of sexual offenses related to their jobs from receiving their state pensions, said Cameron Kline, a spokesperson for State Sen. Larry Farnese, D-Philadelphia, who introduced the bill before Sandusky was charged with sexually abusing boys in his Second Mile program.

"This was introduced on Oct. 18, 2011, well before Sandusky's crimes came to light," Kline said. "It's something we think would be very appropriate for a case such as this. Now that it's over, we're a little concerned, confused and angry it's still stuck there. Apparently it's not a priority so the legislation still stays in committee."

It's a good thing to note that the bill was introduced before Sandusky's crimes were known, because otherwise it would be an ex post facto bill and probably unconstitutional. But there is the nasty little matter of it being stuck in committee. Why would that be? Binversie wields Occam's Razor:

The obvi­ous ques­tion is some­thing along the lines of “Why didn’t this guy work to get his bill on the fast-track once the San­dusky trial started going?”  The law­maker him­self dropped the ball.  His lead­er­ship — which is Demo­c­ra­tic, which means it’s the bitch of the Penn­syl­va­nia pub­lic unions — let this bill die.

The description might be a bit pungent, but it's tough to argue otherwise. It is good news for Sandusky, who will likely need the money to buy lotsa cartons of smokes where he's headed.

A Link To a Serious, Safe, and Important Poll!

[UPDATE FROM MR. D -- I'd appreciate it if you'd take Fearless Maria's poll -- I have a pretty good idea why she's asking these particular questions and I'd like to support her efforts.]

Hello, everyone! I posted a poll on my blog today, and I really need you to take it and share your results by posting a comment on my blog. I promise it isn't anything crazy or political. It is about books.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.fearlessmaria.blogspot.com/

Happy fourth!

Fearless Maria

Just sayin'

Joe Mauer is having a pretty good season, but if the Twins are only getting one representative in the All-Star Game, it should have been Josh Willingham. That is all.

It's a Gasser

I'm sure you've noticed that gas prices have been going down lately. As someone with a nasty commute, I appreciate that the cost is going down at a time when prices usually peak. Of course, since it's an election season, there's plenty of speculation about it, including this strange piece from Frank Cerabino the Palm Beach Post that the Star Tribune decided to run today:

Gas prices may be going down to $3 per gallon this summer. It's Obama's fault. At least, it is according to Fox News, which advised its viewers last week to view the falling price as another sign of President Obama's failed presidency.

I was subjected to this dose of misinformation while waiting for my dentist, who apparently likes to show Fox News in the waiting room as a way to pre-numb his patients.

Ah, the old mind-numbed robot bit. Very clever. There's more, of course:

I guess this is what's meant by the "we report, you decide" motto of the network. You get to decide between lower gas prices being another sign of (a) Obama's inability to make American's lives better or (b) Obama's ability to fool the American people while failing to make their lives better.

What's odd is that Fox actually records its programs. So anybody with a modem can do a Google search and see, for example, what the network's political message was a few months ago, when the average price of gas had spiked to $3.93 a gallon.

"Right now, we're headed to $5 a gallon, by the end of summer, $6," Bill O'Reilly opined on his Fox show. Greta Van Susteren was equally gloomy: "Brace yourself, it will only get worse as we head for summer."

And at the time, that seemed like a pretty reasonable prediction. In fact, MSNBC predicted the same thing:

The price of gasoline today is 10 percent higher than it was just two months ago. The average price for a gallon of regular is almost $3.62. Gas prices in January have been the highest ever recorded price for that month. Many economists and energy analysts believe a rise to $4 a gallon is inevitable. But their estimates could be grossly understated. Gas will reach $5 a gallon before the end of the year.

So a lot of people got it wrong. What changed? Back to the original article:

Well, are the Republicans right? Has Obama's so-called "war on energy" depressed the supply of our domestic oil production, therefore making it more expensive during the past three years? "Oil production in the United States has risen dramatically since 2008," Van Doren said. "It's unprecedented."

But that has nothing to do with Obama, either, Van Doren said. It has to do with a boom in America's domestic production of sweet crude oil in places like North Dakota, and in the technological breakthroughs in extracted oil from shale. And that higher oil prices make it worthwhile for oil companies to invest more in production.

"Obama can't take the credit or the blame," he said.

And in the end, he said, it's not about us anyway. "Gas prices are falling now because China's economy is slowing, and when that happens, it has a dramatic effect on raw materials such as oil," he said.

Yep. The North Dakota oil boom is real and it's spectacular. That helps the overall supply. China's demand is down and so is most of the rest of the world's demand. So prices are going down.

But why is China's demand going down? Because the economy is sputtering worldwide. And while you can't hold Obama personally responsible for the state of the worldwide economy, you do need to realize that there are efforts underway right now to strangle the oil boom in North Dakota and elsewhere. And that will have an effect on prices, if we allow it to happen. We'll talk about that as the year goes on.