Note: I’ll be away from the blog until sometime Saturday morning (although previously prepared posts are going up in the meantime), as I did a necessary overnight drive from Greater Cincinnati to Chicago and back, and am quite wiped out.
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I learned some interesting things during that drive, courtesy of Chicago’s all-news CBS affiliate WBBM (links are to related items I found after I returned):

• There were two sniper reports in Northwest Indiana on Thursday, making a grand total of nine this summer. The area where the sniping has occurred has apparently been named the “Cline Triangle” after the exit near which the sniping has occurred, and for the fact that police can’t solve the mystery of who is doing it. Given that there were two routes for getting to the airport, and that the snipings took place on one of those alternatives, your humble servant chose the other. (latest on the story is here.)

• Target has told the city of Chicago that it will cancel its plans to build a “Super Target” (I don’t recall exactly what it’s called) at a site that it has already selected on the South Side of Chicago if the “Big Box Bill” recently passed by City Council becomes law. The company also said that will also abandon its efforts to find another suitable “Super Target” location on the north side. The law, as noted in this previous post, will require big box retailers to pay their employees $13 in wages and benefits by 2010. The law passed Chicago City Council by a margin of 35-14. If Mayor Dictator for Life Daley, whose signature is still required, vetoes the measure, two or three aldermen (the news said two, but it seems like it should be three for a less than 2/3 majority to occur) will have to change their original yes votes to sustain the veto. The Mayor says that the big box stores will get their business from Chicago residents by locating in or just outside of the city in the inner suburbs, and it’s up to the city not to chase them away. Some aldermen apparently have stated their belief that the city is too important for the stores to avoid locating in it (I’m not kidding).

• Chicago’s Mayor Dictator for Life Richard Daley apparently has a real live rival in the next election, an African-American pastor named Meeks, who is currently a state legislator. Apparently, in the course of criticizing the mayor and his handling of Chicago’s public schools (which the mayor essentially seized control of in the mid- or late-1990s), Meeks used the N-word (yeah, THAT N-word) in some fashion. Outrage ensued. PASTOR(!) Meeks sort-of apologized for his use of the word, said he wouldn’t use it again, but said that his allegations about how the schools were being mismanaged were more important. (Fill in your own blank in this sentence — “If ___________ said this, his or her political life would be over” — On that basis, Meeks appears to be getting quite a pass.)Mayor’s Dictator’s response was on the order of “That’s nice, but it should never have happened; however, it is nice that he has seen the light.” The genius of Daley, inherited from his father (who was on TV so much during the local newscasts in his heyday that he was essentially the co-anchor at all the stations) is that he NEVER, EVER misses an opportunity to get in front of a camera and say something reasonably memorable (note the pastoral play on words in response to Meeks) — which explains why, barring a scandal of earth-shattering proportions or his simply tiring of running the city, he is indeed Dictator for Life.

I never thought that coming back to Greater Cincinnati would feel like such a return to sanity. I’ll ponder that as I catch up on sleep.

Although the ruling on the totality of the actions brought by the complaining attorney was much narrower than would have liked, the court did one very important thing — It threw out the heavyhanded and patently offensive restrictions on attorney-client communications that were included in the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act” (BAPCPA).
From the American Bankruptcy Institute’s BAPCPA Blog (bolds are mine; paragraphing added by me for readability):

The court recognized that Congress passed BAPCPA to remedy abuse of the bankruptcy system, including debtors who improperly take on additional debt prior to filing with the intent of discharging it. Rather than closing loopholes or imposing sanctions for such conduct, however, Congress passed 526(a)(4) as a “prophylactic rule” banning attorneys from advising clients to take on additional debt in contemplation of bankruptcy. The court found this restriction overbroad, in that it prevents lawyers from advising clients to take actions that are lawful, and even in some instances, financially prudent.

For instance, a client might be well advised to refinance a mortgage at a lower rate to reduce payments or forestall, even prevent bankruptcy. A client also might be well advised to take on a secured debt, such as a car loan, that would survive bankruptcy, if it enabled the debtor to have transportation for work which would provide additional income. 526(a)(4) “prevents lawyers from giving clients their best advice.”

Indeed, the court found that such restrictions could also deprive the courts, as well as clients, of good counsel, by preventing lawyers from presenting options to their clients and ultimately the court. Thus, 526(a)(4) was overinclusive in that (1) it prevents lawyers from advising clients to take lawful actions; and (2) it extends beyond abuse to prevent advice to take prudent actions, and was held facially unconstitutional.

I can think of no similar attempt by Congress to gag one party in a professional relationship. It was a clear violation of free speech, and it’s good to see that a court saw it that way. I don’t know whether the ruling can be cited as a precedent nationwide, but it should certainly be a reference point.

On Thursday at TCS Daily, Nathan Smith noted, among many excellent points, that economies throughout the world have been growing nicely for many years, and that, as a result, the end of most of the extreme poverty in the world may not be all that far away:

The world economy is booming. To see the evidence, check out the back page of The Economist. There is a column showing the GDP growth rates of 27 developing countries. In a typical copy from the late 1990s as many as one-third to one-half of these could have minus signs in front of them.

Today, every single one of these developing countries’ growth rates is positive. Substantially positive. The slowest growth rate, in Brazil, is still a respectable 3.4 percent.

In the 1990s, the GDP of developing countries grew at an average of 3.6 percent. Now a faster rate of growth seems to have set in. In 2003, developing countries’ economies grew by 5.6 percent. In 2004, they achieved a sizzling 7.1 percent, then settled back to a still-impressive 6.4 percent in 2005. Rich countries are growing, too — the OECD economies grew at 3.2 percent in 2004 and 2.7 percent in 2005 — but at more a pedestrian pace.

If anything, 2006 looks to be even better. China’s economy grew at 11.3 percent in the second quarter of 2006. India’s busy economy is growing at about 8 percent.

….. But every region except Western Europe is beating its 1990s average. Latin America was regarded as under-performing in the 1990s, averaging 3.4 percent GDP growth. It grew at 6 percent in 2004, 4.4 percent in 2005, and is expected to grow 5 percent in 2006. The Middle East and North Africa region grew at 3.8 percent in the 1990s. It grew at 4.7 percent in 2004 and 4.8 percent in 2005. Sub-Saharan Africa has improved from 2.9 percent average GDP growth in the 1990s to 5.6 percent in 2004 and 5.3 percent in 2005. East Asia (excluding Japan) is beating even its sizzling 1990s average of 8.5 percent; in 2004, it grew at 9.1 percent, in 2005, 8.8 percent.

….. If growth in the developing world continues at its present pace, they will (emerge from extreme poverty). If GDP per capita in developing continues growing at its current rate of about 5 percent, their incomes will double in 14 years, and quadruple in 28 years. There are about 1.1 billion people today who live on less than $1 per day, the World Bank’s measure of extreme poverty. Most of them live in countries with less than $1,000 GDP per capita in nominal terms. If all developing countries’ per capita incomes quadruple, there will only be ten countries left with less than $1,000 GDP per capita. When you think about it that way, the goal doesn’t seem so far out of reach.

Of course, there are lot of ifs, ands, and buts. One of them is whether market-based capitalism will continue to make sufficient inroads into Third World countries to enable it to work its “magic.” The worldwide “foreign aid” apparatus and the corruption that has inevitably and routinely followed the showering of aid with accountability, works against the natural desires of people to lift themselves out of poverty, as I have previously noted (two examples are here [first item at post] and here).

As Smith says at the end of his piece, “….. for now, we’re on the right track. Let’s try not to screw it up.” Indeed.

Free Links:

• The Skeptical Optimist thinks GDP growth is accelerating.

• Mark Ames at AlterNet explains it all (NOT) — The Safeway employee in Denver who, back in late June, shot killed one coworker, wounded four others, and was himself killed by the police did it all because of ….. well, just read this (HT Amy Ridenour; Ames’ original piece appeared at the UK Guardian’s Comment Is Free) –
  

  What changed in the US workplace isn’t a sudden influx of guns on the market, or an influx of psychos in the workplace, but rather the most obvious and powerful cultural force of all: Reaganomics.

  The shooter was 4 years old when Reagan left office. I’d love to hear the argument that he wouldn’t have been so violent if he had instead grown up in a Carter economy of double-digit inflation, mortgages, and unemployment.

• Ho-hum Jobs News from North Carolina — “In one of the largest economic development announcements in Wake County history, Fidelity Investments on Wednesday confirmed plans to build a Research Triangle Park facility that will bring 2,000 new jobs to the area.”

• Insecure Security Software –
  

  A code execution vulnerability in software products sold by Internet security vendor McAfee could put millions at risk of computer takeover attacks, according to a warning from eEye Digital Security.

  The flaw affects fully patched versions of all McAfee consumer security products, including the company’s flagship McAfee Internet Security Suite 2006.

• Update on Governments Telling Apple How to Run Its iTunes/iPod Business — Norway is trying to bully Apple into enabling iTunes songs to work on any music player. I think the company has a decent response:
  

  ….. the two sides still disagree on the crucial point - the ability to download music files to other players than iPod.

  Apple said that limits posed by iTunes to the choice of players were not ” unreasonable” because “users can burn music to compact discs” and then use these freely.

  “They have the freedom of choice and the mechanism does not violate competition laws,” Apple’s letter also said.

  Apple has shown “both the will to make a change and have a dialogue, but there is yet a long way to go before an agreement is reached on all the points,” the Norwegian agency said.

  While it might be “nice” if Apple’s songs were all-player-enabled digitally and instantly, it’s the company’s call. It also remains to be seen if Apple is making long-run mistakes with iTunes and iPod similar to those it made with the Macintosh back in the 1980s that ultimately led to the Mac OS’s current under-5% market share.

• An interesting critique of “climate change” news coverage — from of all places, a British Labour Party think tank:
  

  Media attacked for ‘climate porn’

  The apocalyptic vision of climate change used by newspapers, environmental groups and the UK government amounts to “climate porn”.

  That is the conclusion of a report from Labour-leaning think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

  It says that the over-use of alarming images is a “counsel of despair”, making people feel helpless.

  Someone forgot to tell the think-tankers that making people feel helpless, so that the government can “make things better” by taking over more of the economy and dictating the conduct of the part they don’t take over, is the whole point.

This is especially remarkable when you consider how easily the discovery could have been lost (HT Good News Blog):

July 25, 2006

DUBLIN, Ireland - Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.

“This is really a miracle find,” said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.

“There’s two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out. First of all, it’s unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing.”

He said an engineer was digging up bogland last week to create commercial potting soil somewhere in Ireland’s midlands when, “just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer, he spotted something.” Wallace would not specify where the book was found because a team of archaeologists is still exploring the site.

“The owner of the bog has had dealings with us in past and is very much in favor of archaeological discovery and reporting it,” Wallace said.

Crucially, he said, the bog owner covered up the book with damp soil. Had it been left exposed overnight, he said, “it could have dried out and just vanished, blown away.”

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations’ attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

Wallace said several experts spent Tuesday analyzing only that page the number of letters on each line, lines on each page, size of page and the book’s binding and cover, which he described as “leather velum, very thick wallet in appearance.”

It could take months of study, he said, just to identify the safest way to pry open the pages without damaging or destroying them.