From Fairfield, Ohio:

Updated 8:30 AM Monday, June 15, 2009

The city of Fairfield dedicated the Joe Nuxhall Pavilion Sunday, June 14, paying tribute to the Reds former pitcher and broadcaster.

Located at Waterworks Park, the pavilion sits in the middle of several little league fields and includes a statue of Nuxhall teaching Jasmyne and Zach Sexton — two Fairfield students selected by Nuxhall’s son Kim— how to pitch.

Joe Nuxhall is still the youngest person to ever play in a major league baseball game, having debuted as a Reds pitcher at age 15 in 1944. Following his playing days, he spent more than 30 years as a Reds radio broadcaster. Nuxhall died Nov. 15, 2007.

Former Red Sean Casey said that in his 12 years of professional baseball, Nuxhall was the “greatest human” he had ever come across.

“Joe was so nice,” Casey said of the Hamilton native and longtime Fairfield resident. “He never knew he was a legend.”

….. Several speakers broke down as they remembered Nuxhall’s gifts to the community he called home.
“He never thought he was anything special,” said Fairfield Mayor Ronald D’Epifanio. “I wish…well, he’s here and he’s wondering again, ‘Why for me?’”

Go here for the full story. A related Cincinnati Enquirer story is here.

First the federal government’s auto bailout bullies came for Chrysler’s secured, first-lien creditors, and defeated them.

Then they came for General Motors’ unsecured bondholders. The feds appear to be in the drivers’ seat in shafting them disproportionately to force a better deal for the United Auto Workers’ healthcare trust.

Now, in a matter that at first only seemed to interest the Wall Street Journal, they’ve also come after Delphi’s debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing providers as GM attempts to scoop up what it wants from the bankrupt auto-parts supplier. But this time, at least for now, a bankruptcy judge with a richly appropriate name has stopped them:

Judge Orders Auction in a Rebuke to Delphi Plan

A U.S. bankruptcy court Wednesday sided with a group of Delphi Corp. lenders who said a government-led plan to sell the auto-parts maker’s operations to a private-equity fund trampled on their rights.

Judge Robert Drain ordered Delphi to hold an auction and allow bids to challenge the government-brokered sale to Platinum Equity. “What’s so special about Platinum?” asked Judge Drain.

….The ruling is a victory for a group of hedge funds who stand to (lose) 80% or more of their roughly $2.5 billion in debtor-in-possession, or DIP, financing. The decision came on the same day that Chrysler LLC and Fiat closed their government-brokered tie-up over the objections of Chrysler creditors who argued they were treated unfairly by the Obama administration.

The Delphi case is the latest in an escalating debate over the Obama administration’s attitude toward creditors’ rights in bankruptcy court. ….

“The rule of law and commercial rights of lenders cannot bend in the face of political forces,” said Marc Abrams, a lawyer for a group of the hedge funds, in a standing-room-only courtroom in lower Manhattan Wednesday before Judge Robert Drain.

…. The (government’s) plan calls for some DIP lenders, including the most senior creditors owed about $2.5 billion, to receive 20 cents on the dollar for their loans. These lenders argue that Delphi’s plan overstates the amount they would receive. A Delphi reorganization plan that collapsed in April 2008 called for DIP lenders to receive full payment.

“A DIP loan should be money good,” said Mr. Abrams, whose clients include Silver Point Finance LLC and Monarch Alternative Capital. “It’s the T-bill of a bankruptcy claim.”

Megan McCardle at the Atlantic’s Asymmetrical Information blog explains the significance of DIP financing:

…. this is an even more heavy-handed intervention than Chrysler, and considerably more disturbing. Debtor-in-Possession financing, or DIP, is the financing that allows companies to reorganize in bankruptcy. It’s senior to everything else because if it weren’t, no one would be willing to lend money to companies that definitionally have a high probability of failure. Stiffing those creditors in order to make GM, or even Delphi, better off, is incredibly short-sighted.

It also has some potentially scary implications for our political economy. The quasi-legitimate argument in favor of the government’s interventions in favor of the UAW was that Uncle Sam was the only available debtor-in-possession financier, and therefore had a right to call the tune. Screwing over the DIP providers would, of course, make it harder for other companies to get DIP. What new rights could the government discover in those bankruptcies?

In this case, however, the bankruptcy judge wasn’t buying. He ordered Delphi to put its assets up for auction. Now we get to test the theory that the government is acting in ways that actually make all the creditors getting cramdowns better off. If the government has indeed been acting in everyone’s best interest, the auction will be a dismal failure.

Given that the New York Post has reported that Carl Icahn’s Federal-Mogul Corporation appears to be interested in bidding for Delphi, we may already see the judge’s decision vindicated financially.

My only quibble with Ms. McCardle is that the result shouldn’t be the driver here in any event. Trampling on secured lenders rights, as the government successfully did at Chrysler, has no legal basis, and should never have been allowed to stand. Running roughshod over the proportional rights of unsecured lenders has no legal basis and shouldn’t be allowed at GM; it may yet be turned back.  DIP financing provider’s rights must remain superior, even if the government’s plan is better, because that’s what the law says (the same goes for governments’ supposedly superior plans in eminent domain situations that go beyond the Fifth Amendment specific permissions; it’s irrelevant that they’re superior — even though they often aren’t).

Don’t like the law? Pass a new one the old-fashioned way — through Congress.

Most of the establishment media’s laziness in covering these important matters during the auto bailout bankruptcies has bordered on disgraceful, and has been anything but informative.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

(begin sarcasm)

Thanks to Leon Panetta’s comment about Dick Cheney (“he’s [almost] wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point”), I finally have a grasp of history as revised by the Left.

You see, I now know that Winston Churchill wanted to see the Nazis rise in Germany.

I now know that Churchill wanted Hitler to break his word in that Sudetenland “peace in our time” deal the Fuhrer made with Neville Chamberlain. Not that Churchill expected Hitler to keep his word; he knew he wouldn’t. He wanted Hitler to break his word.

I now know that Churchill wanted Hitler to roll the tanks into Poland in 1939.

Churchill wanted the German tanks to run right around the supposedly impenetrable Maginot Line through Holland and Belgium and have them roll into Paris, so Hitler could then turn his attention to taking out Great Britain.

Isn’t it obvious? Churchill warned that these or very similar things would happen, and they did. Thus World War II is clearly all his fault. Chamberlain’s off the hook, a misunderstood hero.

(/sarcasm)

Seriously, if Churchill really wanted these events to happen in the name of partisanship or power, he would have shut his trap during the 1930s and waited for history to catch up with him. But he didn’t, because he was first and foremost a patriot and a statesman.

Likewise, if he really wanted to see another serious terrorist attack or a North Korean nuke on our own soil, Dick Cheney would shut his trap and let the Obama administration continue to demonstrate weakness, cut funding to key defense efforts, give more respect to our enemies than to our friends, and release the Gitmo terrorists without uttering a word.

But Dick Cheney has spoken out, precisely because above all he is a patriot and a statesman. God bless Dick Cheney.

Leon Panetta, in turning his critical office into yet another political arm of the Democratic Party, has shown himself to be unfit for that office. He should resign. An administration with even the slightest grasp of the importance of Panetta’s job would fire him. Neither will happen.

Dick Cheney forever; Leon Panetta, NEVER.

Mike Jay at the Boston Globe had what appeared to be a pretty compelling lookback piece on Sunday, June 7. It started as follows:

The day pain died
What really happened during the most famous moment in Boston medicine

The date of the first operation under anesthetic, Oct. 16, 1846, ranks among the most iconic in the history of medicine. It was the moment when Boston, and indeed the United States, first emerged as a world-class center of medical innovation. The room at the heart of Massachusetts General Hospital where the operation took place has been known ever since as the Ether Dome, and the word “anesthesia” itself was coined by the Boston physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes to denote the strange new state of suspended consciousness that the city’s physicians had witnessed. The news from Boston swept around the world, and it was recognized within weeks as a moment that had changed medicine forever.

Wow. Pretty bracing stuff, except for one thing: A commenter named “introp” told the Globe (currently the fourth comment down) that they’re wrong about Morton being first.

The evidence is on the side of “introp.”

Here’s “introp’s” comment:

The first documented case of ether use for anesthesia was by Crawford Long on 30 March 1842 to remove a tumor from a patient’s neck. That was *four years* before Morton’s well-publicized case. Before publishing an article on the development of anesthesia, you perhaps should have asked a member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA): they could have set you straight.

Indeed, a quick visit to ASA’s web site, which may even be accessible from the Boston Globe’s newsroom, confirms this (paragraph breaks added by me):

On March 30, 1842, Crawford W. Long, M.D., a graduate of the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, administered the first anesthetic for surgery in his office on the corner of the village square in Jefferson, Georgia. Dr. Long was a native of nearby Danielsville, Georgia, and had recently returned home after completing several months of advanced training in surgery in New York City. The patient was a friend, James Venable, and the surgery was the excision of a lump from the back of Mr. Venable’s neck.

Dr. Long eventually moved away from Jefferson and settled in Athens, Georgia. His claim to have performed the first anesthetic was largely ignored by the rest of the world, but the citizens of Jefferson never forgot this pioneering physician.

After he moved, the building that Dr. Long used for an office continued to be occupied by another physician for a while but was eventually torn down, and in the late 1800s, two buildings were built on the site. One of the buildings was a general store until 1957 when it was converted to a museum honoring Dr. Long and his historic accomplishment at that location.

The commenter’s correct point has been at the Globe since the morning of June 10. There is no evidence of a correction at Jay’s article, but the Globe did run a separate correction on June 13 (bold is mine):

Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in the June 7 Ideas section mischaracterized William Morton’s 1846 use of ether at Massachusetts General Hospital as the first surgical operation under anesthetic. It was the first such operation to be demonstrated publicly.

The correction, never incorporated into or mentioned at Jay’s piece as far as I can tell, is inadequate in any event. Wikipedia tells us the following:

Although William T. G. Morton is well-known for performing his historic anesthesia on October 16, 1846 in Boston, Massachusetts, C. W. Long is now known to be the first to have used an ether-based anesthesia. Morton is now sometimes credited as performing the first “public” demonstration of ether as a surgical anesthetic, however this is also erroneous as Dr. Long publicly demonstrated ether’s use as a surgical anesthetic on numerous occasions before 1846. In 1854, Long requested William Crosby Dawson, a U.S. Senator, to present his claims to the attention of Congress.

Wiki, of course, doesn’t prove anything by itself, but the book linked by Wiki, at Page 134, tells us that:

(Long) operated on at least eight cases …. before Morton claimed to have discovered anesthesia,” and that two other doctors taught by Long “used ether successfully in their surgical practice before date of Dr. Morton’s “discovery.” …. It is beyond question that Dr. Long at once announced his discovery to the physicians of the community in which he lived, an that he was regarded by them as having made a discovery of importance, so important in fact that they used ether with success in their own practice.

Maybe in the Globe’s newsroom something doesn’t count as “public” unless and until the news travels to Boston.

Much of the rest of Jay’s writing is at the very least suspect, but not easily investigated by yours truly in the time available.

The reporter seems to overstate the ferocity of religion-based opposition to the very idea of relieving pain. He further implies that the Catholic Church didn’t legitimize anesthesia for the faithful until the mid-1950s when he writes that, “Some religious voices would hold out for a good deal longer: Pope Pius XII would confirm that ‘the Christian’s duty of renunciation and of interior purification is not an obstacle to the use of anaesthetics’ only in February 1957.” Given that plenty of Catholic hospitals were using anesthesia well before the mid-1950s, Jay’s sentence introduction, shortly followed by the word “confirmed” in its body, comes off as a deliberately misleading play to the “Christians/Catholics are dinosaurs” crowd.

Jay’s article still opens with the claim that Morton’s was “the first operation under anesthetic.” Jay’s opening is wrong. Only someone looking for a correction elsewhere at the Globe’s site would find it.

The Globe is apparently okay with that. Perhaps that explains why, based on circulation figures, fewer New Englanders are okay with the idea of reading it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Ta-da:

Yowza.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

From Byron York at the Examiner.com, “Gerald Walpin speaks: The inside story of the AmeriCorps firing” — “The White House’s decision to fire AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin came amid politically-charged tensions inside the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that runs AmeriCorps. Top executives at the Corporation, Walpin explained in an hour-long interview Saturday, were unhappy with his investigation into the misuse of AmeriCorps funds by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California and a prominent supporter of President Obama. Walpin’s investigation also sparked conflict with the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento amid fears that the probe — which could have resulted in Johnson being barred from ever winning another federal grant — might stand in the way of the city receiving its part of billions of dollars in federal stimulus money.”

Read the whole thing.

If a similar dismissal would have occurred under Bush, it would have been a front-page and evening news-leading item.

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There’s a crowd-size claim disparity relating to yesterday’s Flag Day Tea Party event in New Richmond, Ohio, east of Cincinnati. One claim is from a credible source; the other isn’t.

WLWT, which had the only coverage I could find and was the only relevant listing in this Google News search, was silent about the size of the crowd.

This basic journalistic failure enabled WLWT commenter CincyCapell, who wasn’t there, and whose Twitter bio proclaims a misssion of “Pi**ing Off Right Wing A**holes One wingnut At A Time” (asterisks are mine), to snark that “it looks like there were all of 50 people” attending.

Meanwhile, Instapundit did a post that included a claim from e-mailer Justin Binik-Thomas, who was there, that there were 1,000.

Well, it’s too bad that I have to pi** off CincyCapell (not really), but I would say that these 55KRC photos (scroll through them) prove that Binik-Thomas is much closer to the truth. Anything remotely close to 1,000 would be pretty impressive, given the lousy weather and light advance notice.

Update: Make that “over 1,000,” according to Instapundit. That seems a stretch, but any other reality-based on the scene observations (this would obviously exclude CincyCapell) on crowd size, pics, and other news about the event would be welcome.

_______________________________________

From the “To Make An Omelette, You Have To Break a Few Nest Eggs” Dept. — “GM’s deal erased many average Americans’ savings.”

As noted here on May 22, they’re also on the verge of having their proportionally equivalent rights as debtors trampled upon by the government, the United Auto Workers union, and the bankruptcy court handling the GM case.

They’re just collateral damage in our Brave New Obamaworld.

From the UK:

Jun 12 2009

HERO dad Ian Greig walks daughter Heather down the aisle – a year after he saved her life by donating one of his kidneys.

The beautiful bride recently tied the knot with sweetheart Jamie Dyer at the Millennium Hall, Gartocharn, in a special day both she and her proud dad feared they would never see.

Heather, 36, who is originally from Alexandria, was close to death when her kidneys failed two years ago – but her dad put his own life on the line to ease Heather’s suffering.

Ian, 62, said: “It broke my heart to see what she was going through. The risk of the operation didn’t worry me one bit.”

Heather, who now lives in Thurso, was put on dialysis after her kidneys failed. Her father’s brave move may have been her last chance for a kidney transplant, as both her brother Ian and partner Jamie were previously ruled out as suitable matches.

Gartocharn man Ian, a retired Faslane electrical engineer, underwent nine months of tests and the operation was finally approved by medics at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, in July last year.

As Ian woke up in pain and covered in tubes, his daughter also wakened from the serious operation at the other end of the hospital to Jamie by her bedside.

She said: “I still had my oxygen mask on and he said, ‘will you marry me?’

“I immediately said yes – through my mask,” she laughed.

“I woke up from the anaesthetic feeling like my old self again, it was incredible. I felt amazing from day one.”

The father and daughter both asked medics if they could see one another – and were reunited in a hospital corridor.

Ian said: “Waking up from the operation, having donated a kidney to my daughter, was the most sensational feeling.

“As we were separated I said I wanted to go and see Heather. The nurse was taking me along the corridor in a wheelchair when I saw Heather was doing the same.

“The first thing she said was, ‘dad, I’m going to get married.’

“They took us into a separate room and it was so emotional, we just broke down.”

On May 2, ten months after the operation, Ian proudly gave Heather away at her dream wedding in Gartocharn. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

Leave it to the British press to once again do the job of real reporting that U.S. journalists apparently won’t do.

This time, it’s Tom Leonard at the UK Telegraph. From Flint, Michigan, he tells us of a “pioneering scheme” that involves tearing down entire neighborhoods and simply abandoning them — oops, I’m sorry, I meant to say, “returning them to nature.”

This is apparently what passes for sophisticated urban planning these days.

Here are key paragraphs from Leonard’s story. Especially note the breathtaking anti-progress hostility of the idea’s champion (bolds are mine; Getty picture at top right is from that story):

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr. Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

…. But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that “big is good” and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

He said: “The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there’s an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they’re shrinking, they’re failing.”

Kildee’s odious “all development is good” characterization of those who might be less than pleased with his outlook shows that he has learned quickly from watching Dear Leader, the “master” of the straw-man argument. But you know what? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that, in general, communities that are growing really are successful, and those that aren’t are indeed failing.

This is amazing. They’re not even interested in attracting industry, or in new developments to draw shoppers, or in convenient housing that might lure residents back into town, or even in park or recreational space. Kildee and those who agree with him, apparently including the President, prefer to do nothing and let the land sit abandoned — while they proudly survey the non-fruits of their non-accomplishment. Maybe they’ll hold reverse ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Flint’s festivities could be emceed by infamous former resident Michael Moore.

If there’s a virtue to doing nothing, it’s that the government won’t get involved in something ineffective and end up wasting tons of taxpayer money in the process.

President Obama in particular may remember one such project, made infamous by the Chicago Sun-Times and blogged on last fall by yours truly at NewsBusters, BizzyBlog, and elsewhere — namely the $100,000 Obama Gazebo (or, alternatively, the “Obamazebo“).

Now the same guy who couldn’t be bothered following up on a project he said he would “work tirelessly” to have built is in charge of our country’s $3-4 trillion federal budget, including an $800 billion alleged economic “stimulus.” Let 8,000,000 Obamazebos bloom.

Pardon me, I need a drink. ….

…. Okay. Of course, the better answer for these near-dead neighborhoods would be to to sell the abandoned properties to private owners and see what they can do with them on their own. That sounds like that’s the last thing Dan Kildee wants. Who needs progress anyway?

As to the U.S. media — Where were they when this “brilliant” idea was hatched, and why are they apparently not shamed at being scooped by a UK paper?

As to public policy — Who wants to bet against “stimulus” money finding its way towards some of these “demolish and do nothing” projects if Kildee’s proposal becomes a 50-city reality? That wouldn’t exactly be “stimulating,” would it?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

State Treasurer Boyce’s actions are exactly the kind that this state DOESN’T need.  From the Dayton Daily News:

COLUMBUS — As Ohio’s budget swells with red ink, state Treasurer Kevin Boyce spent $32,469 in taxpayer money on promotional items such as water bottles, grocery bags and pencils and plans to buy another $47,457 in swag plastered with his name.

Boyce defended the purchases as routine and said his marketing budget is about 30 percent less than what fellow Democrat Richard Cordray spent when he was state treasurer.

But state Rep. Josh Mandel, R-Lyndhurst, who is running against Boyce, said, “While families and small businesses are tightening their belts, it seems outrageous that the treasurer is using the hard earned dollars of Ohio families to promote himself.”

And Catherine Turcer of Ohio Citizen Action, a good government watchdog, said just because other statewide officers spend budget money on promotion doesn’t make it right.

“So many office holders see this as a perk of incumbency without thinking through the cost to the taxpayers,” Turcer said.

Boyce, 37, who was appointed treasurer in January to replace Richard Cordray, is running statewide for election in 2010. His office is charged with collecting, investing and protecting state funds.

…Shortly after his appointment to the treasurer’s post in January, Boyce assembled a team of top aides pulled from Ohio Democratic Party, Columbus City Hall and politically connected families.

He hired Liam Shanahan — son of Strickland’s energy advisor Mark Shanahan and budget director Pari Sabety — into a $45,011-a-year job. Shanahan, 24, who previously worked at a zoo and water park, drives Boyce places and acts as an administrative assistant.

Boyce hired Jessica Ford, 22, daughter of former Toledo mayor Jack Ford, to run his Toledo community affairs office at an annual salary of $45,011. Early in his career, Boyce served as Jack Ford’s legislative aide in the Ohio House.

Elizabeth Luken, the sister of former Cincinnati mayor Charlie Luken, landed a $45,011-a-year job running Boyce’s Cincinnati community affairs office.

…And Boyce hired a former Ohio Democratic Party fund-raiser Lakshmi Satyanarayana, 23, as an administrative assistant to Culp and Deputy Treasurer Amer Ahmad. She is paid $35,006 a year.

Boyce also hired two friends from high school, a man who goes to his church, and several people from Columbus city hall.

Newton Burris, 36, who is paid $105,019 a year as the treasurer’s economic development director, played football with Boyce at Columbus East High School. Boyce’s scheduler and administrative assistant, Angela Burks, 36, who is paid $67,000, is another friend from high school. Boyce and Burks also knew one another at Columbus City Hall where Burks worked for the mayor while Boyce was a city councilman.

Derek Anderson, 32, who makes $100,006 a year as human resources director, attends St. Paul AME Church with Boyce.

…Mandel said given the state’s lowered bond rating and huge deficit, “it is imperative that the treasurer be someone who understands the importance of hiring well-trained, qualified professionals, not cronies and political friends.

Read about the reckless spending here.  I just LOVE how the Democrats have “Turned Around” Ohio (eyeroll).

Had enough ”hope & change?”  Good, go to Josh Mandel’s website & get involved!

(image is from OrangeJuiceBlog.com)

Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media on Thursday, and was teased here at BizzyBlog with some additional historical perspective.
____________________

They never really mended it, so they may be forced to end it. There’s a bigger message for all of us.
____________________

California has proposed the previously and supposedly unthinkable: ending welfare.

Before you get too outraged (or perhaps excited), “welfare” specifically refers to a single but significant program known in the Golden State as CalWORKs. It is California’s version of the nation’s welfare reform effort. Known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children until 1996, traditional “welfare” changed its name to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) when Congress passed comprehensive reform. Then-President Bill Clinton, who had twice vetoed the legislation, finally signed it on the advice of then-adviser Dick Morris because “a third veto could (have) cost him the 1996 election.”

One has to go back to Ronald Reagan’s term as governor to find the last time this core entitlement program was really under control in the Golden State. As the late Paul Weyrich noted in a 2006 column, “Reagan managed significantly to cut welfare rolls while increasing support for those who really needed help.”

But by the mid-1990s, a mind-boggling 8% of the state’s residents, or almost 2.6 million people, were on the dole, almost double the percentage in the rest of the country.

Under welfare reform, the country’s bloated caseload dropped very quickly. In its first four years, about 2.5 million families came off the dole. In the vast majority of these families at least one adult entered the workforce. Huge numbers of formerly dependent tax consumers became economy-contributing taxpayers. This unprecedented mass transformation is an important but underappreciated element of the prosperity of the late 1990s.

During its first six years, welfare rolls came down in California at about the same rate as the rest of the nation. By the end of 2002, the number of families and total caseload in the state were down 47% and 55%, respectively, compared to 52% and 57% for the rest of the US. But as noted, California was starting from a much larger base. The state’s family and caseload declines should have been much, much steeper, and weren’t.

After that, while the rest of the country improved, California first mostly treaded water, and then slid seriously backwards. The following graphs compare what has happened since 2002 in California with the rest of the U.S. (all figures are as of year-end except 2008, which is as of September 30; source data is at this U.S. Office of Family Assistance link):

The first graph shows that while the percentage of the population on welfare in the rest of the U.S. has declined by over one-third since 2002, California’s percentage has actually increased. The state’s welfare dependency rate has gone from double to well over triple that of the rest of the country The second graph shows that while welfare caseloads in the rest of the U.S. have dropped by almost 30% in the past 5-3/4 years – continuing to drop even during last year’s difficult economy — California’s caseload has actually increased by about 10%. A June 4 Sacramento Bee report tells us that 525,000 families, yet another 27,000 more than last September, are now on CalWORKs.

As a result, though it has only about 12% of the country’s population, California’s share of the total U.S. welfare recipients has risen from 22% in 2002 to 32% today. The state has a whopping 869,000 more people on the dole than it would if it mirrored the rest of the country.

There is no defensible reason why the California’s caseload should be so obviously and seriously out of whack.

Is it because of immigration, legal or otherwise? No way. The percentage of the population on welfare in Texas and Florida less than half of what it is in the rest of the country excluding California.

Could it be the state’s stratospheric cost of living? Nope. While above the national average, the percentage of the population on the dole in New York State, which of course includes the country’s most expensive city, is only 1.3%.

Is it the economy? Nice try; no sale. As shown, welfare rolls have continued to fall elsewhere. Additionally, in the year ended September 30, 2008, the number of TANF recipients in the economic basket case known as Michigan dropped by 16%, or over 30,000.

Sadly, it is much more likely that the state’s political establishment, Democrat and Republican, as well as its social services bureaucracy, have both resisted the fundamental national reforms passed 12 years ago at nearly every possible turn. Misplaced compassion here, and surely in other areas, has ultimately led to the state’s budgetary brick wall.

The fact that California is at least semi-seriously considering ditching CalWORKs entirely should serve a warning to Washington political elites, as well as to the rest of us, who inexplicably keep returning most of them to power in every election. For generations, Democratic and Republican administrations have let demographic time bombs like Social Security and Medicare grow in explosive potential. What little tweaking has occurred almost always involved tax increases. Fundamental reforms such as individually controlled Social Security investment accounts and medical savings accounts have been either furiously resisted or watered down to the point of ineffectiveness.

In the not-too-distant future, barring the unexpected appearance of political will, when these and other time bombs amounting to over $50 trillion dollars detonate, it will be decades too late for tweaks, and years too late for fundamental reforms. As with CalWORKs, discussions will commence not about mending, but ending.

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UPDATE: Here are two additional graphs that I considered overkill for the Pajamas column, but that can be posted now:

The first shows year-by year increases in California’s welfare population as a percentage of the entire country’s. It has gone from 22% to 32% in less than six years. The second shows that the number of persons in the average welfare family is higher in California than in the rest of the country, more than likely meaning that welfare mothers in the state are consistently having more babies than those in the rest of the country.

In the wake of the Chrysler hijacking, Will nails it:

Controversy about the judiciary’s proper role is again at a boil because of a Supreme Court vacancy, and conservatives are warning against “judicial activism.” But the Chrysler and GM bailouts and bankruptcies are reasons for conservatives to rethink the usefulness of that phrase and to make some distinctions.

Of course courts should not make policy or invent rights not stipulated or implied by statutes or the Constitution’s text. But courts have no nobler function than that of actively defending property, contracts and other bulwarks of freedom against depredations by government, including by popularly elected, and popular, officials. Regarding Chrysler and GM, the executive branch is exercising powers it does not have under any statute or constitutional provision. At moments such as this, deference to the political branches constitutes dereliction of judicial duty.

What Will describes as a clarified definition of “judicial activism” for sound bite purposes is really best described as “doing their constitutional jobs.”

Sometimes the numbers in a wire service report are so ridiculous, you just know that they’re bogus.

On Wednesday, June 11, a duo of Associated Press reporters, Chris Kahn and Sandy Shore, with an assist from Tali Arbel, reported on a study “green jobs” study released by the Pew Charitable Trusts. In “The Clean Energy Economy: Repowering Jobs, Businesses, and Investments Across America,” Pew made the growth in “clean energy” appear more impressive than it is by vastly understating job growth in the rest of the economy during the past decade — by a factor of three.

None of the three AP “journalists” involved, and none of the alleged layers of fact-checkers and editors at the wire service, had the intuitive sense to detect an error by Pew so pathetically obvious that anyone following the economy at all — and that includes the folks at Pew — should have known the figure involved was false.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the AP story (bold is mine):

The fledgling renewable energy industry has grown steadily over much of the past decade, adding jobs at more than twice the national rate, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Wednesday.

Solar and wind-power companies, energy-efficient light bulb makers, environmental engineering firms and others expanded their work force by 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007, the latest year available, according to Pew.

The average job growth in all industries was 3.7 percent during the same period.

The entire energy sector has experienced growth in recent years as well, according to the Bureau of Labor. Bureau data shows coal mining jobs jumped 16 percent from 2003 to 2009. Oil and gas extraction jobs jumped 28 percent.

So there is no misunderstanding, here are the exact quotes from Pew’s press release, and from its full report (a PDF whose link is on the third line of the press release; bold is mine):

(from press release) Pew found that jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007.

(from full report) But Pew’s research shows that between 1998 and 2007, clean energy economy jobs—a mix of white-and blue-collar positions, from scientists and engineers to electricians, machinists and teachers—grew by 9.1 percent, while total jobs grew by only 3.7 percent.

So the AP reporters looked at some of the information readily available at Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Good for them.

Too bad they didn’t look at the following information at BLS, obtained by yours truly in all of three minutes (go to this BLS page and check the top four boxes, retrieve the data, and change the beginning year to 1997 to replicate), that totally debunks the Pew Report’s core claim that “clean energy” is a leading economic contributor.

You see, my research at BLS reveals the following about “total jobs” from the end of 1997 to the end of 2007:

Total jobs grew by 11.1% during the 10-year period in question. Total private sector jobs grew by 10.7%. These percentages are triple and almost triple, respectively, the 3.7% figure served up by Pew and swallowed whole by AP. They are also larger than the Pew report’s claimed “clean energy” job growth percentage of 9.1%.

Thus, the first sentence of AP’s report should have read:

The fledgling renewable energy industry has grown steadily over much of the past decade, but has added jobs at less than the national rate.

Sort of blows the whole reason to bother with Pew’s report, except perhaps to report how fundamentally flawed it is, doesn’t it?

Though Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web (second item at link) didn’t comment directly on the overall jobs disparity in Pew’s report vs. reality, he did make this observation about the AP’s likely outlook towards Pew’s report that led the wire service to be so lax in its fact-checking:

This misleading framing of the data did not originate with the AP; the Pew press release is titled “Pew Finds Clean Energy Economy Generates Significant Job Growth.” But this points to a way in which media bias often operates. Rarely do news reporters merely rewrite a press release touting a study that comes from a conservative or free-market group. Instead, they take a more critical approach in order to compensate for the group’s bias. There’s nothing wrong with that; the fault lies in journalists’ failing to apply a similar skepticism to liberal groups.

Taranto’s point is valid, but there’s a larger one.

The unfortunate AP reporters involved appear to have been sucker-punched by their media comrades’ “Clinton grandeur followed by recession followed by jobless recovery followed by flat performance followed by recession” rendition of the economy that was recited virtually without interruption during the Bush years. Never mind the reality that jobs on the ground increased at a double-digit rate during the decade reviewed; these reporters were so taken in by the false narrative that they didn’t even recognize how totally and pathetically bogus Pew’s 3.7% job-growth figure is.

This means that the falsehoods of the eight years preceding the ascension of Dear Leader seem to have fed on themselves to the point that the establishment media’s own reporters couldn’t flag bogus information that should never have passed the stench test, let alone the smell test — let alone getting into print and published.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Commenter Bradley looked at the graphic in Pew’s Report (saved at my host) allegedly showing percentage state-by-state job growth in “clean energy” and in total. As expected, it has the same errors.

For Ohio, it claims a 2.2% contraction from 1998-2007. Not at all — BLS data shows that Buckeye State employment at the end of 2007 was 5.43 million (Table 5–Seasonally Adjusted Employees on Nonfarm Payrolls), vs. 5.38 million at the end of 1997 (Table 3, same title) — an almost 1% increase. That’s not huge, but it’s enough to count.

But the Buckeye State hasn’t grown much compared to the rest of the country. So let’s try Texas, from the same sources: 2007 – 10.39 million; 1997 – 8.58 million. That’s an increase of 21.1%, vs. Pew’s 6.7%. Zheesh.

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UPDATE 2: The footnote at the graphic in Pew’s report says that its source for the national labor growth figure of 3.7% and those of individual states is the “National Establishment Time Series (NETS) Database and data from the Cleantech Group LLC.” NETS is not publicly available.

The specific methodology description on Page 14 of the report (Page 16 of the PDF) says the following (link within was added by me):

This report counts jobs, companies, patent registrations and venture capital investments that are part of the clean energy economy, as Pew defines it, across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Because a perfect data set with which to count these jobs and businesses does not exist, and obtaining an accurate count of this emerging economic activity is difficult, Pew used data that provide detailed information on individual companies.

As a first step, Pew’s researchers identified companies receiving clean technology venture capital. Next, we used the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) database—a time series database of U.S. public and private establishments based on data from Dun & Bradstreet—to identify similar and related companies. This approach enabled us to capture the different sets of activities that result in products and services produced and supplied by the clean energy economy, creating the most comprehensive and accurate count of jobs yet available. For the purposes of this analysis, we studied jobs and businesses between 1998 and 2007.

Fine. NETS, based on linked description, appears to be a good way to track growth of disparate types of businesses that aren’t broken out in fine detail by BLS. NETS looks at existing businesses and how they did and didn’t grow.

But please note that the two paragraphs above don’t specifically inform us that Pew also relied on NETS for its information about job growth in the economy as a whole. We have to look at teeny-tiny footnotes in a few exhibits for that.

The very detailed explanation of Pew’s methodology at Exhibit B (Page 45-48 of report, Pages 47-50 of PDF) describes in detail the steps taken in using NETS to extract “clean energy” job estimates. I generally have no quarrel with that; in fact, it seems pretty clever. But again, Pew doesn’t specifically say that it also used NETS info to estimate job growth in the economy as a whole. The closest it got was to tells us why BLS and Census data weren’t considered useful for estimating “clean energy” jobs. It never told us why NETS info is better than BLS or Census data for reporting job growth in the entire economy — because it isn’t.

From all appearances, using NETS data as a proxy for job growth in the entire economy is an egregious misapplication of the database. How can it be defended when it obtains a result so obviously at variance with readily available data coming from people who have been at it for decades?

But even if Pew had put out the most wondrous explanation imaginable, the fact remains that the 3.7% result cited for “traditional (i.e. all non-clean energy) jobs” in the press release and “total jobs” in the report itself is wrong, deceptive, and led Pew to a totally incorrect conclusion. That it was blindly accepted by journalists who should know better but nevertheless accepted it on faith because it was coming from people they consider “good guys” is very sad, and all too typical.

Regardless of whether I’ve properly pegged the nature of Pew’s error, the fact remains that however it applied NETS to jobs in the economy as a whole, it came up with an egregiously and obviously wrong result. The BLS data prove it.

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UPDATE 3: While we’re at it, Pew’s Exhibit 12 (also saved at host) is using “Total Jobs” numbers that are way, way off about the number of people actually working in the individual states; I believe they are really “total adults of working age.” Glutton for punishment that I am, I added up the 51 numbers presented and came up with over 157 million — 19 million higher than the nonfarm total of people working at the end of 2007 per BLS above.

Individual state totals confirm the error. Examples: Ohio’s 6.30 million per Pew’s Exhibit 12 is 16% higher than BLS’s 5.43 million; Texas’s 11.73 million per Pew is 13% higher.

Though this error hurts Pew’s “case” by resulting in a lower-than-actual percentage of people working in “clean energy,” the more important point is that Exhibit 12′s overstatements confirm the report’s general sloppiness.