Fixing What Isn't Broken

Elaine Kamarck is a Democrat policy wonk from the Clinton-Gore Administration who according to her current profile “served in the White House from 1993 to 1997, where she created and managed the Clinton administration's National Performance Review, also known as reinventing government.” She’s now a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Kamarck began a 2006 article for governing.com about government’s response to Hurricane Katrina with these words:

The first rule of innovation in government should be similar to the first rule of medicine — “First do no harm.”

But addicted government interventionists simply can’t control themselves. In Wednesday’s Boston Globe Op Ed page Kamarck prescribes fixes for what is not broken: the global Internet. She wants to end net neutrality and proposes mandating pricing and policy changes on Internet Service providers (ISPs). Excerpts (emphasis mine):

In any other business model, growing to meet this demand would be easy. Rapid growth usually provides more money for investment. But the Internet business got started as a flat-fee business - we all pay one monthly fee regardless of how much bandwidth we use. The grandmother who stares dreamily at her grandchild on Skype pays the same monthly rate as the grandmother who sends an e-mail wanting to know if he's learned to say "dada" yet.

Over at MIT, the Communications Futures Program argues that we are fast coming to a turning point - either the flat-rate pricing models have to end so that there can be more investment, or the Internet will slow to a crawl. Pricing changes will be unpopular to consumers accustomed to what they call "all you can eat" prices.

Did she ever consider that ISPs themselves might (when facing capacity constraints) create different service levels and sell some at a premium?

Another available option is to charge the generators of video such as YouTube higher fees for access and continue with the flat rate pricing models.

Exactly this plan has been proposed, and was rejected by our legislators.

In the past, when Internet service providers have tried to raise rates, someone has come along and offered the same service for less. But this history may be coming to an end,

I’ll make that bet with you, lady. Private innovators are far less likely to gum up the Internet's workings than a policy bureaucracy that originates in Washington.

and that's why they are urging the companies to change their pricing structure

Which is a far different prescription than getting government involved in dictating pricing and priority.

It will be difficult to get phone companies to charge the prices necessary to pay for new investments in Internet infrastructure. No one can make them do so, for the Internet is not regulated. But industry will need to take into account the public interest.

We need to start thinking about a variety of options…

Excuse me Elaine, but exactly who are you including in this “we”?

Perhaps we should look at different pricing structures for different online activities or require the use of "smart" networks that give lower priority to entertainment-related data than to packets of data in areas like telemedicine. Many Internet activities are in the broad public interest. We need to make sure those aren't hampered because, somewhere in the world, teenagers are playing online games or grandmas are staring at their children's babies.

But just maybe, Elaine, KSG bureaucrats-in-waiting should offer some benign neglect to this non-problem and expect that businesses which have (to some degree) incentives to profit by selling their own services can figure out how to restructure, market, and price these services and how much and when to invest in new capacity as customer service requirements change (and they change VERY quickly on the Internet).

The Internet has done pretty well at serving the public for the past 20 years, much better than any US government agencies I can think of. It has done so even though it has not had the benefit of regulations thought up by do-gooders at the Kennedy School of Government.

Take you own advice, please, Elaine. "Do no harm".

As for predictions from MIT that the Internet will collapse under the weight of expanding use, they have been around for well over 10 years. The most famous such was by Robert Metcalfe (PhD from MIT, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com). For many years Metcalfe wrote an influential column in Infoworld. In a December 1995 column he wrote:

"I PREDICT the Internet...will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse."

With typical flair, Metcalfe offered to eat his words at the end of 1996 if his prediction didn’t come true. He ate a piece of paper containing his incorrect prediction at a press conference a year later.

Metcalfe’s 1995 prediction was made as the Web and HTTP were taking off. But it was long before Google, Facebook, Ebay, Napster, Skype, or YouTube required much bandwidth.

He could have been right, of course. Certainly the technologies of the Internet have never been very far ahead of its amazing growth. But thousands of very bright people work very hard every day to help the Internet keep up. Much of their work is done within for-profit entities, but much also is done in non-profit standards bodies (whose activities are largely underwritten by the private sector through pro-bono participation of their own people).

Ironically, Kamarck’s own political mentor, the Nobel prixe winning Al Gore, proposed in the early 1990s that the US government should build an “information superhighway” so that important new network technologies could flourish without being hampered because, somewhere in the world, teenagers are playing online games or grandmas are staring at their children's babies” on the Internet.

Happily, Gore’s early pleadings were ignored. He then “moved on” to discover global warming.

Merry Christmas

Robert Frost wrote often and disapprovingly of “the loud laugh the big laugh at the little” (see this and this, for example). Frost’s work often points to the irony and foolishness of such an attitude. But it is all around us and, sadly, is found within each of us as well. In my youth the congregation knelt at Mass when we came to the ancient words of the Creed concerning the first Christmas – “Et incarnatus est, de Spiritu Sancto, ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est.” Christmas teaches us that the one Being who truly is “big” does not laugh at the foolishness of the little but instead becomes one with them and one of them. There are none who are too little for the Creator. Yet we little creatures constantly need reminders of the true preciousness of all. Christmas time is one such reminder.

Merry Christmas.

James Carroll: “Christ and the Grand Inquisitor”

James Carroll writes a superb Christmas column in today's Boston Globe entitled “Christ and the Grand Inquisitor”.

You read that right – James Carroll. Once or twice each year he shakes off his Bush derangement and when he does his gifts become apparent. Sadly, it doesn’t happen more often than this.

No excepts. No comments. Nothing follows. Just read the whole thing.

I Must Have Gotten Off On the Wrong Planet

Democrat apparatchik John Sasso writes in today's Boston Globe on a new Hillary:

She has reached beyond her political inheritance and shaped a political presence all her own. Hillary belittlers still abound, to be sure. She is still caricatured as calculating. But the senator has taken on some different markings. Gone is the defensive bite, on hand is a new openness to concede mistakes, often with glints of humor.

Another Unintended Consequence of Abortion

A Reuters story in today’s Boston Globe about sentencing in a Chinese child prostitution trial ends with a mention of the “root causes”:

Aid groups say women and children in China also face a growing threat of being sold into marriage or trafficked for sex work as labor migration and a widening gender imbalance put them at risk.

A "widening gender imbalance" in a nation with over 1.3 BILLION people? How could such a thing occur? This story illustrates another unintended consequence of pro-choice and authoritarian family size laws, as readers of this blog already know.

The Patriots' Contrarian Ticket Strategy

Boston Globe business columnist Steve Bailey pens a very insightful column (“Patriots stand tall”) about the contrarian ticket strategy of the New England Patriots franchise and its owners, the Kraft family. Excerpts:

This week, giant Ticketmaster won the hotly contested bidding to become the Official Ticket Scalper of the National Football League. The deal will mean maybe $20 million for the league and the teams, but the Patriots have made clear they don't want any part of it (as have a handful of other clubs)…

The Kraft family, who have turned the Patriots into a model franchise, are not stupid businessmen. They know that it was not that long ago, before they arrived on the scene in 1994, that there could be 35,000 people in the stands and 300 arrests in the Animal House culture that was the sorry old Foxboro Stadium. The drinking and hooliganism was so bad that the network pulled the plug on Monday Night Football there. It was a bad customer experience, on and off the field….

The Krafts have largely fixed that. Better security has helped. So has the new Gillette Stadium. But knowing who is sitting where, and holding them accountable, has made a difference, too. It can still be raw in some sections of Gillette Stadium on a Sunday night, but the experience is night and day from the bad old days.

I like the free market, too, but pro sports are not a true free market. There are more than 50,000 people on the waiting list for Patriots season tickets, but the Krafts aren't about to expand the stadium and the NFL is not about to put a second franchise here because of demand…

As this blogger is fond of saying, “There is no free lunch. There is no free love. There is no free market.” That doesn’t mean that allowing market forces to operate is not the single most critical factor for an economy. It simply means that the truly ”free market” is an economist’s abstraction realized only to various degrees in actual markets. Bailey’s column shows that the Krafts (and Bailey) appreciate this distinction. They are building a franchise, and ticket distribution is an element of that strategy, not just a means of maximizing revenue.

Deval Patrick's Casino Jackpot

Commenting on Governor Deval Patrick’s casino sideshow Wednesday and the state’s chronic fiscal problems, the Boston Globe editorial cloister scribes this in “What state government needs”:

The costs of government will overwhelm these limited sources of money unless the Legislature makes government, both state and local, more efficient. Lawmakers took two steps forward this year: They mandated that cities and towns join the state pension system if their own plans are doing poorly, and they encouraged communities to offer their employees health coverage through the cost-saving Group Insurance Commission.

Next year, the governor and legislators need to go beyond these limited efficiencies. Could, for instance, more services be privatized? Could state and local workers' benefits be more closely aligned with those in the private sector? Voters will be more receptive to increases in broad-based taxes if they know the money that goes to the state - from casinos, the closing of loopholes, or wherever - is spent in the most cost-effective way.

Agreed!

But where are Patrick’s gubernatorial initiatives for this restructuring of government? As far as these go, Deval seems to have dusted around the edges, with a view toward concentrating power in the governor’s hands. Rather than antagonizing public sector unions, as the above reforms would require, Deval is enlisting unions to serve as extras for his casino sideshow.

His main priority, it seems, is focused on boosting state revenues by any means possible. Casino destination resorts are Deval’s pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.

Too bad that it’s fool’s gold.

Joan Vennochi’s Crocodile Tears

Joan Vennochi pens an unusually embittered anti-Romney column (“Cry me a river, Mitt”) Thursday:

Voters won't elect Eddie Haskell, the neighborhood operator who dripped with unctuous attitude on "Leave it to Beaver," the iconic sitcom of the 1950s.

No? Then why did the electorate twice buy into Bill Clinton’s pandering and unctuous hypocrisy? Bill Clinton is Eddie Haskell…on steroids. Most everybody knew it, but many voters believed his dissolute character didn’t matter as long as he was effective.

As a presidential candidate, Romney has two challenges - to prove he's not a robot, or a phony. When voters see him cry, they should turn their Mitt detector way up high.

Not as high as I keep my own s--t detector when Globe Op Ed writers comment on candidates they clearly despise.

Casino Deval Part 15: Union Muscle

Above on the front page of Wednesday’s Boston Globe is Casino Deval testifies in favor of his gaming plan surrounded by a few ultra-wealthy casino developers, some pols, and a few dozen union folks all wearing red T-shirts made especially for the occasion, which read “Casinos + Unions = Good Jobs”.

Enterprising reporters might ask:

Is this the sort of “people power” Deval talked about during his campaign? How is it that dozens of union workers decide to spend a day in Boston listening to pols bloviate about casinos? What unions do they belong to? Did they give up a day of wages to sit there? How were these union folks recruited (or perhaps “voluntold”) by the their local and the Patrick administration?

But unfortunately Matt Viser’s softball Boston Globe story answers none of these questions. It does report the skepticism of some lawmakers:

"This is the most regressive form of taxation ever invented by mankind," said Senator Susan Tucker, a Democrat from Andover who is an ardent gambling opponent. "I suggest to you that there is not a single state that has ever gambled its way out of budget problems."

Supporters don’t consider it a form of taxation, but gaming is indeed regressive. Another skeptic:

George Carney, who owns Raynham-Taunton racetrack, went on a tirade for nearly 10 minutes. "We're going to keep on running," Carney said. "But I'm telling you, there's no money left in the racing. If you want to keep us going, you've got to give us the slots."

That’s exactly how Deval looks at things, George. But Deval is not trying to fund a race track, but rather the Commonwealth's bloated, unreformed, patronage-laden, earmarked, feather-bedded, union-rate public sector (exempli gratia: our $15B Big Dig). Deval is telling the voters and their representatives that “there's no money left in the taxing. If you want to keep big government going, you've got to give us the slots.”

Such imaginative and dynamic leadership! Did Deval get the idea for this union sideshow from Ted Kennedy? I’m sure it makes most of Deval’s supporters blush. For example, over at Blue Mass Group, Charley writes:

This is one opportunity cost of Gov. Patrick's casino crusade: The time and energy that could have been spent towards addressing actual problems that Massachusetts residents face every day…Have you heard him say one word about our crumbling commuter rail service lately...We didn't support this Governor so that he could give the state casinos. We supported him because we thought he would be the guy who was going to be responsive to the real quality of life issues in the state.

Amen. But don’t tell me, Charley. I voted for Muffie. Whatever her faults, would she have squandered so much of the first year of her administration tub-thumping for the casino industry and this public financing scheme?

Boston Globe says White Folks Can’t Dance

Of course they say it obliquely. In a humorous seasonal Op Ed piece entitled “Surviving the office party”, author Monique Doyle Spencer gives several rules for getting through an office holiday party with one’s reputation intact. Among her rules is this one concerning dance etiquette:

Rule Five: Enthusiasm on the dance floor is a really bad idea at the office party. Reserve this behavior for your morning dressing routine or your cousin's wedding where you don't know anybody. At the office party, let geography be your guide. Where were your ancestors 400 years ago? If they lived south of the 30th parallel north, but west of 90 degrees east longitude, you may dance enthusiastically. Otherwise, keep shuffling with a smile. Do not flail. In your genome, wild dancing fits on a continuum that starts at "mid-life crisis" and ends at "seizure."

The geographic region Ms. Spenser describes is the one shown above. By invoking our ancestry of 400 years ago, she is letting the word “geography” serve as a proxy for the concept we now call “race”.

But Ms. Spencer exaggerates. It would be more accurate to say that the distribution of ability for graceful movement may vary slightly among “geographies”, and that Europeans are under-represented among graceful dancers. If she wants to bring genetics into the argument, she should note the obvious; that those humans gifted with the XX chromosome are over-represented among those with extraordinary grace in movement.

But don’t touch this topic if you work in academia. As one former local university president said:

My point was simply that the field of behavioral genetics had a revolution in the last fifteen years, and the principal thrust of that revolution was the discovery that a large number of things that people thought were due to socialization weren't, and were in fact due to more intrinsic human nature, and that set of discoveries, it seemed to me, ought to influence the way one thought about other areas where there was a perception of the importance of socialization. I wasn't at all trying to connect those studies to the particular experiences of women and minorities who were thinking about academic careers.

By making such remarks about small differences in ability, this particular fellow has now become too “controversial” to continue as a local university president or to appear on the Globe Op Ed page.

Hanukkah at the White House

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby recalls his father’s 1944 Hanukkah in Auschwitz from the utterly different circumstances of this year’s annual White House Hanukah celebration:

By the light of the White House menorah, I thought about my father, and about the unimaginable distance from the hell he knew in 1944 to the place of joy and warmth where I found myself standing in 2007. I was overcome with a feeling of gratitude so intense that for a moment I was too choked up to speak.

Jeff’s Sunday column is a must read.

Power Line blogger Scott Johnson attended the 2005 White House Hanukkah reception and wrote his account of that event here.

The Globe newsroom covered this year’s White House event with an AP story, the same coverage it received in last year’s Globe. The 2005 White House reception that Scott Johnson attended did not make it into the Globe.

Note the difference in “color” between the first person accounts of Jacoby and Johnson and the perfunctory AP stories.

The Wretched Clintons

IBD cartoonist Michael Ramirez captures the Clintons' subtle and always deniable ruthlessness. Far less humorous, but just as illustrative is husband Bill's astounding performance on PBS, which also confuses for me at least about which Clinton is running for what office. Why isn't Hillary on PBS instead of Bill?

Commenting on the PBS interview, Wretchard at Belmont Club expects more of the same or even worse is to come from the Clintons:

Bill and Hillary's renewed emphasis on being her being "vetted" suggests that, declarations to the contrary, the Clinton campaign has not yet taken its secret weapons off the table -- just positioning them for a better thrust. After some experimentation they understand there are better and worse ways to stick in the knife. Using third parties to hit Obama has apparently backfired. So now she's playing the I'm-cleared-but-can-you-be game. We don't know what dirty secret Hillary's got up her sleeve, but if the religious and chemical hints foreshadow the hell she can unleash, it must be pretty corrosive stuff indeed.

I just can't believe that. The irony of the Clintons charging others with scandal should make even loyal Clintonistas blush with shame, unless they have lost the ability completely.

Top of the News

The Sunday front page sidebar of the Boston Globe modestly gives top billing to...its own endorsement of Obama and McCain in the New Hampshire primary.

Here is the response of this former Globe subscriber.

Clinton Campaign Warns of Nasty Repubs

Today’s Boston Globe front page story on the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire is telling. First the campaign points out a nasty thing that Republicans might say about Obama:

"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight . . . and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use," Bill Shaheen, the husband of former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Billy Shaheen is the co-chairman of Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign.

But while Republicans might say such a thing, the Clinton campaign would not, even though they just did:

Kathleen Strand, a spokeswoman for Clinton in New Hampshire, moved quickly to distance the campaign from Shaheen's comments, saying they "were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way." Shaheen did not return phone calls seeking comment, but later apologized in a one-sentence statement issued by the campaign.

That is Clintonian truth, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.

Not Newsworthy

This Boston Globe front page story today about an incident on a Peter Pan bus appears 2 days after the same story appeared prominently in blogs.

Does the Globe story mention the blogs, or say how the Globe learned of the story, or (!) link?

Uhhhh…no. Those aspects of the story must not have been “newsworthy”.

CORRECTION applied. My mistake. Sorry.

The Liar Paradox

Joan Vennochi notes that Bill Clinton’s recent untruthfulness doesn’t help his wife’s campaign (Hmm. Where have I read that before?). Then Joan writes:

Bill Clinton can tell Hillary Clinton what it's like to scratch back from the brink of political death. That's what he did in 1992, when his campaign was jolted by scandals.

Yes, except that Bill (and Hillary) clawed their way back from the brink of political death in 1992 by lying through their teeth about the all-too-accurate allegations that caused the scandals, and by telling an obedient press to “move on to issues that really matter to Americans”.

That pattern was repeated so often over the next 8 years that it became quite familiar.

Off Topic: The First Tufts Naked Quad Run

Universal Hub notes the annual event known to Tufts students as the “Naked Quad Run” and to Tufts administrators as the “Nighttime Quad Reception”. They also point to an article in the Tufts Daily on the origins and history of the night, which reports these are shrouded in “rumor and often disputed”.

My spouse and I were both present at the event that became the genesis of the NQR. At that time I lived in West Hall, where the naked runners now start. We compared our memories of that first event last night, which I will share.

Our main recollection is that the first event was largely spontaneous. A few groups of people may have planned some activities, and there were several overwhelmingly male groups of “streakers”. But what distinguished the evening and made it memorable was that it quickly became a spontaneous campus-wide party that went on into the wee hours. A weeknight party on such a scale seemed unprecedented.

The spirit of the event was whimsical. It was absurd yet somehow enjoyable that large numbers of the normally studious (called “throats” at the time) had simply discarded their plans to study and/or sleep. I recall eating and drinking with several friends in a room in Carmichael Hall with an excellent view of the Quad. I have a funny memory of one student cycling around the quad repeatedly at high speed, wearing only a ski cap and a scarf.

The night was, in the words of Frost:

…an impulse not to care--
Not to sink…

The next morning schedules returned to normal, but for a few hours they had been completely and delightfully discarded.

We have other slightly different recollections than the story in the Tufts Daily . We recall that the first event occurred during the Spring term, probably in March or April, and on an unseasonably warm evening. We also believe that the year was 1974 rather than 1973. It was not during the week prior to exams, but perhaps it did occur as academic pressures were mounting.

The Tufts Daily reports:

One common story is that the event began as a protest against co-ed dormitories. "I've heard different rumors. One was that it started when West Hall was all single sex and was becoming coed, but I don't know if that's just a myth that's been created," senior Katie Winter said. But according to alumni and officials who were at Tufts when the tradition began, its origins are far less concrete. TUPD Sergeant Robert McCarthy, who has worked at Tufts for 35 years, said that the first Naked Quad Run had nothing to do with dorm policy. "How that came out, I have no idea. It started a long time before West Hall even thought of becoming coed," he said.

West Hall was an all-male dorm at that time. Its high ceilings, hilltop views, and 3-4 person suites were coveted by students of both genders. The building was then divided in half by a wall, so designating one half of West as a women’s dorm would have been simple, even with the standards of the day. The barrier to women living in West, according to a letter from the nascent feminist organization to the campus newspaper, was that each half of West Hall was served mainly by a large gang shower in the basement. Tufts women of that day, even feminists, were not open to the practice of showering in the company and view of other women. Of course most men living in West did this daily.

West Hall became coed after it was extensively remodeled in the 1980s, including opening the barrier wall between the 2 halves of the building and replacing the ancient gang showers. So much for 1970s feminist liberation, and so much also for the account of the sole eyewitness quoted in the Tufts Daily:

“We grew up with our childhoods[sic] in the '60s and it was fine to be comfortable with your bodies and what you looked like - big, small, thin or fat."

That particular recollection may be blurred by the unfortunate aftereffects of hallucinogens. The time when humans (females especially) are universally comfortable with your bodies and what you looked like - big, small, thin or fat is as likely as the withering of the state under socialism.

Fish. Barrel. Gun. Sorry, I can't resist.

Bill Clinton was wagging his finger yesterday in Iowa and is quoted in today’s Boston Globe:

"I always tell people when I speak that you're entitled to discount what I have to say,"

Indeed, so we all have learned.

"I thought it would be wrong for me to rob [Hillary] of the chance to be what I thought she should be," said Clinton. "She laughed and said, 'First I love you and, second, I'm not going to run for anything, I'm too hardheaded.' "

I still agree with this early self-assessment.

Finally:

"I thought she was the most gifted person of our generation," said Clinton

Mr. Clinton’s evaluation of feminine giftedness is so heavily weighted by their skill at performing fellatio that I will discount this remark, as he said we are entitled to.

Deval Patrick Has Gulled the Gullible

From today’s Boston Globe front page:

Governor Deval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray have raised more than $1.4 million in combined campaign contributions since taking office, much of it by aggressively soliciting the same special interest groups that, as candidates last year, the Democrats denounced as wielding too much influence on Beacon Hill.

We so thought Deval would be different! Why?

"If you want the same old same old, the politics of money and connections, I'm not your guy," he said in a Sept. 7 [2006] debate with Democratic opponents. "But if what you want is the politics of hope and a change of culture on Beacon Hill, I am your guy, and I want your vote."

It seems the gullible have been gulled once again.

Some Days Our State Should Just Stay in Bed

Joseph P. (Joe-4-Oil) Kennedy remains one of our state’s major embarrassments. A former congressman, he runs the non-profit Citizens Energy while waiting for Uncle Teddy's liver to provide him with a shot at the US Senate. Here he is quoted at a ceremony yesterday accepting a donation of heating oil from Venezuela:

“Our government gets their panties in a knot much more than most Americans do about Hugo Chávez…I know there's a lot of controversy about the fact that this oil ultimately comes from Citgo, from Venezuela and, yes, from Hugo Chávez. I'll never be in the tank to Hugo Chávez, but I'll tell you I wish we had a little more leadership in this country that has a concern for the poor and the disenfranchised as we do in other parts of the world…We approach every major oil company and every OPEC nation each year to ask that a small slice of their record profits go to help the poor. Only one oil company -- CITGO -- and only one nation -- Venezuela -- stepped up to the plate to offer a helping hand.”

The above quotes come from this Boston Globe story and this Venezuela PR site (complete with web ads for the recent constitutional “reform” in Venezuela and a Chavez biography!)

Not to be outdone in causing embarrassment, US Representative William Delahunt, (D- Chavez MA) also spoke at the ceremony:

…said he was grateful to Citgo for "an extraordinary example of people-to-people humanitarianism." "It's time that other oil companies stood up and replicated the example of Citgo," Delahunt said. He added that he planned to soon convene other members of Congress to travel to state-owned oil companies in Kuwait, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia asking them to make similar donations to help poor Americans pay heating bills.

Aid (political donations, really) from Venezuela now and next from Mexico? Billy boy, why not add Nigeria and Chad to the list for your next cheap oil shopping trip on behalf of “poor Americans”?

An Unspecific Recipe for Misery

From weather.com

A wintry mix early will evolve to mainly freezing rain overnight. Some accumulation possible.

The term "wintry mix" is a recent meteorological euphemism for slush. It doesn't help to call it that.

When Do Fetuses Become "Unborn Children"?

It is rare to find the term “unborn children” used in the Boston Globe, unless it is within a quote from a pro-life advocate. However today the term appears on the Globe’s front page sidebar in connection with this news story of a horrid (but failed) attempted murder.

As of today Google reports that for pages at boston.com with the word “abortion” there are only 42 pages that also contain the term “unborn children”, many of which are quotes from pro-lifers. But 460 pages, over 10 times that many, contain the word “fetus”.

I’m curious to know what the Boston Globe reporting style guide requires in such cases. Here the expectant mother is 7 months pregnant. I suspect that if she were at an abortion clinic, the fruit of her womb would be referred to as fetuses. But since she planned to give birth, the same entities are reported as unborn children.

How hazy is the concept of human life in today’s media (and today’s law).

Astounding Boston Globe Chutzpah

Astounding that the Boston Globe has enough chutzpah to begin a news story this way:

A Peabody company that painted Mitt Romney's Belmont mansion in recent months is under investigation by state authorities for dodging labor laws and accused of relying on subcontractors that exploited workers, including illegal immigrants.

Hmmm. That behavior reminds me of a local broadsheet called the Boston Globe, which relies on a subcontractor named Publishers Circulation Fulfillment for distribution of its product all over the Boston area. The Globe doesn't use this service every few years (like a painting company), but every single day.

The vast majority of PCF workers are immigrant "independent contractors". Hundreds of them work daily to fulfill PCF's contract with the Boston Globe.

Could it be that the Boston Globe is also relying on subcontractors that exploited workers, including illegal immigrants?

And why somehow is this particular story of large scale immigrant labor exploitation judged to be not as newsworthy by the Globe newsroom?

Getting Immigration Exactly Backwards

A few tasty leftovers remain around the Boston Globe table today on the subject of immigration. First a follow-up story to the Globe’s Mowergate expose yesterday reports the “reaction mixed”. The story ends with this delectable quote (emphasis mine):

"Give everybody papers that are here undocumented that are hard-working and haven't committed any criminal acts," he said. "Let them better themselves. Then build the wall, and keep out more. That's the only way."

The Globe editorial page haughtily agrees (surprise!) in “Romney’s Immigrant lesson”:

As for Romney, he should return to his earlier support for the kind of comprehensive immigration solution that Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy proposed this year. It could have helped him and his landscapers. But it failed, exactly because of the type of demagoguery in which Romney has been engaging.

Ironically, when a majority of both Democratic and Republican Senators voted against this same “comprehensive immigration reform” bill, the Globe reported that the event was “another example of the demise of bipartisanship”. How bipartisan can you get?

The Globe editorial cloister still does not get it, with respect to immigration which shows how well the issue might triangluate for Republicans. Democrate Rahm Emanuel, the purest political animal in all of Washington, does get it:

“This is a values issue. How does a superpower not have control over its border? You have to enforce the rule of law as it relates to the border and you have to enforce the rule of law as it relates to benefits. Then the American people will be open to resolving the issue as it relates to what industry needs and what immigrant advocates need."

Proposals for “comprehensive immigration reform” has thus far proposed exactly the opposite order, which is what bleeding hearts will choose. Indeed because he is no kind of bleeding heart, Emanuel is a valuble asset to the Democrats, when they listen to him.

Mowergate II: The Globe Provides Deja Vu

Boston Globe reporters have been staking out Mitt Romney’s home again.

One year ago, the Globe reported that it had staked out Mitt’s home over a period of 4 months and had sent a reporter to Guatemala to interview former employees of the company that Romney hired to tend his yard. Some were illegal immigrants.

Mitt apparently told the grounds-keeping company they had to hire only legal workers but didn’t fire the company until yesterday, when he was told that the Globe had found still more illegals among the workers in his yard.

BFD.

The Globe’s coverage of Romney is nothing more than a vendetta thinly disguised as journalism, especially since he began his campaign for the presidency. Since then, the Globe newsroom seems to have been on a crusade to scuttle the Romney campaign. The antipathy of Globe reporters and editors toward Romney is palpable, and literally dozens of past posts on this blog dating back several years have documented how normal is the Globe’s overtly hostile attitude.

Struggling US newspapers also have a business interest in maintaining a supply of cheap, exploitable immigrant labor. US newspapers (the Boston Globe included) exploit the labor of hundreds of illegal immigrants who daily distribute their product to residential subscribers. The business arrangements are such that technically these workers act as independent contractors to an outsourced distribution operation. Thus their labor can be used without the need to inquire about their immigration status. Hundreds of immigrants are used to distribute the Globe daily.

This vested interest in immigrant labor has never been acknowledged when the Globe’s opines in editorials about immigration policy. Nor have I seen their teams of investigative journalists cover the large scale exploitation of immigrant labor in their own distribution process.

Romney’s lawn crew is a higher priority.

UPDATE: Here is the Globe newspaper story, headlined "More immigrant woes for Romney". More woes from agenda journalism, really

Hat Tip: Malkin

Patriot Games

This blogger is wiped out this morning from last night’s Patriot game. Christopher L. Gasper writes in today’s Boston Globe:

In one of the wildest endings you'll ever see in a football game, the Patriots converted a fourth down on their third try to keep their hopes alive…

Getting three tries at a 4^th down and 1? That is wilder than running a kickoff back through the band.

Not Likely

Mohammad Usman is an exchange student from Dartmouth. To say that he is spending a semester abroad is an understatement. This semester Mohammed is studying as an exchange student at Wellesley, and is the lone male Wellesley student among 2300 undergraduates.

But can Mohammad find his 72 virgins?