October 3rd, 2008
You just heard enough about it so, the less said by me about last night’s debate, the better.
Yeah, that’s it. If people are going insist on being so impressed by under-acheiving, I’m not going to achieve any debate coverage at all.
At least the first storm of the season is finally upon us. It will be a welcome respite for firefighters working around the state. It’s also a reminder that the holiday season won’t be far away. This holiday season, we’ll also be celebrating the end of a nearly two-year old campaign.
May the McCain campaign’s race to seize the low ground continue, and culminate in an end to our country’s failed experiment in Republican governance.
We’ll be moving to a new time slot next week, so this is the last time that you’ll be hearing the Timothy Jordan Show News on a Friday evening. Starting next weekend you’ll be able to hear the whole Timothy Jordan Show crew Sunday evenings at 6:30, immediately following the KPFA evening news.
So enjoy it while it lasts, this Timothy Jordan Show News for the 3rd of October, Ought-Eight.
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The Congress passed, and our President has signed into law an economic bailout package for the financial industry. A first attempt to pass the bill through the House failed Monday afternoon, as rank and file Congressmen on both sides of the aisle bucked the pleas of the Democratic and Republican leaderships to vote for the bailout.
The near universal opposition to the bill by House Republicans was a clear indication of just how little influence both the incumbent President Bush, and the Republican nominee have over their fellow party members.
Things changed when the bill reached the Senate. In another failure to act as a deliberative body, and… you know… deliberate about what needs to be done, the Senate took the Bush bailout proposal and loaded over 400 pages of special interest tax breaks, hurricane relief, and executive compensation.
Once the Senate got a hold of it, it was as if the bill brought the holidays a few months early to Capitol hill.
Some of their changes, particularly the limits on executive compensation for companies that choose to participate in the bailout, and extensions of the renewable energy credit, are relatively progressive. Further tax cuts for oil production companies… not so much.
Unfortunately most members of Congress were more concerned about taking a few swings of the bat against this piñata of a bill rather than actually reading the damn thing.
I’ve read the bill. It’s less than thrilling. For example this gem out of the section defining appliances that qualify as energy efficient:
“TOP-LOADING CLOTHES WASHER.—Subsection (f) of section 45M is amended by re-designating paragraphs (4), (5), (6), and (7) as paragraphs (5), (6), (7), and (8), respectively, and by inserting after paragraph (3) the following new paragraph:
‘TOP-LOADING CLOTHES WASHER.—The term ‘top-loading clothes washer’ means a clothes washer which has the clothes container compartment access located on the top of the machine and which operates on a vertical axis.’.”
That gem goes a long way towards explaining why nobody reads these things.
I really wish they did, however, because while energy efficiency credits might, while not directly related to economic stimulus and recovery, things like a two year extension on the cost recovery time for racetracks. The coverage was set to expire last December, but now gives major racetrack owners an additional two years to claim tax credits on their property.
We’re also seeing tax credits for Puerto Rican rum producers, mine rescue teams, railroad track maintenance, and for an extension of credits from Hurricane Katrina relief. That hurricane hit three years ago.
Rural schools get some benefits, companies employing native Indians (That’s feather, not dot Indians.), timber producers, and dozens of other groups.
It’s going to add billions of dollars to a bill that began at $700 billion.
Where did this number come from? Why did nobody in Congress ask this question?
• via Sunlight Foundation, full text of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 PDF
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We’ll keep asking. Maybe we’ll have some answers for our listeners next week. In the meantime I’ll bring our listeners something excellent.
It’s not excellent, but a new project from the MAKE magazine crew just has to be mentioned. I really want to see this someone with a few extra hours actually do this.
What they’ve made are metal plates to hold down your clothes inside carry-on luggage. Not only do they help compress your clothes into those tiny carry-on sized bags, but they also have messages and symbols for the screeners at the x-ray machines.
I don’t think that they’re illegal, but they’re almost certain to get you detained. I’d really like to see someone try one out as a piece of performance art.
• Makezine Metal plates send messages to airport x-ray screeners
No our excellence this week is all about escaping attention. Specifically it’s about escaping the attention of tsunamis. The research, based out of the Fresnel Institute, uses a new principle discovered in the development of cloaking devices. Yes, cloaking devices. It is already possible to make an object essentially invisible to microwaves.
As noted by New Scientist, the prototype uses a series of metal posts arranged in concentric rings to redirect the energy of rising water. Waves entering the series of rings push against the posts and find themselves spiraling around the structure, rather than passing through.
A 10-cm prototype shows that waves hitting one side pass to the other, without ever passing through the center. A structure at the center of the prototype would be effectively invisible to the waves, the water around it stays calm.
At a larger scale these barriers could protect oil rigs, ships, and possibly even shore installations like harbors and beaches.
•New ScientistInvisibility cloaks could take sting out of tsunamis
And that’s the News for October 3rd, Ought-Eight.