The Simple Life

Douglas Adams revealed the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life the Universe and Everything in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. (If you think Adams made up the answer you're wrong; you can check for yourself using the Google calculator.) Black leaders including Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Atlanta area Congressmen David Scott, John Lewis, and Cynthia McKinney have one-upped Adams and simplified life considerably by discovering the answer to every question: Racism. From the Sept. 2 Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"I have been outraged and horrified at the level of response to this national disaster," Franklin said. "I'm not really sure what we're waiting for. Are we waiting for everyone to die?" The mayor and three Democratic members of Congress at Atlanta City Hall placed the blame for the mounting death toll on Bush's shoulders and suggested that the response might have been swifter in New Orleans if the suffering faces on the TV news were not black. "Many people in the African-American community are saying the reason that the federal government did not respond as quickly as it should is because those are black people in New Orleans," U.S. Rep. David Scott said. "Prove me wrong." Scott and Reps. John Lewis and Cynthia McKinney, their rage unconcealed, accused Bush of failing to prepare before the hurricane despite warnings of widespread flooding and said he had squandered the nation's resources on the war in Iraq instead of preparedness at home.

James Taranto points out that of the five Louisiana parishes hit hardest by Katrina, four are predominantly white. The rescuers should be very careful or they might accidentally save a black person. Part of the problem, it seems, is the media--or at least Mayor Frankin's reliance on television for her information:

In Atlanta, Franklin urged Bush to "get on board and lead us" and said he shouldn't need to fly over the Gulf Coast to comprehend the tragedy. "If you want to see what's going on, turn on the television," she said.

Certainly, if you watched television coverage of post-hurricane rescue efforts you saw mostly black faces. This was due to the media's focus on the dramatic flooding of downtown New Orleans--which is predominantly black. But Katrina's devastation cut across huge areas of two states, flooding out people of all colors, leaving them homeless and in need of rescue. Mayor Franklin's perspective might be more accurate and less prone to self-embarrassment if she had toured the hardest hit areas herself before lashing out. A bigger problem is the media's own poor judgement in reporting the press-conferences of these race-hustlers: What they have to say isn't news anymore. Black Americans would be better off if they stopped electing and, especially, stopped listening to such leaders.

For the Want of a Driver?

"Funerals are for the living, not the dead," goes the old folk-saying, perhaps adapted from the more cynical version penned by La Rochefoucauld. And post-disaster presidential speeches are for the unscathed, being of greatest utility to those who, like the New York Times, confuse talk with accomplishment.

While the Times and other newspapers were preoccupied with important matters such as sorting presidents by the number of vacation days taken per term and grading presidential speeches, more serious journalists like Bryan Preston of JunkYardBlog worked this weekend to uncover the mind-boggling chutzpah of New Orleans officials like Mayor Ray Nagin and Terry Ebbert, head of emergency operations for the city. Nagin, Ebbert, and, to a lesser degree, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, vacillated between vituperation and tears last week as they blamed federal officials and President Bush for a "slow and inadequate" response to hurricane Katrina. But Preston and other bloggers have uncovered the following facts:

• The city of New Orleans had an evacuation plan that called for the use of municipal and school buses for removing residents without other means of transportation.
• Previous evacuations were voluntary because some citizens lacked means of transport. The Katrina evacuation was also voluntary until President Bush called Nagin and Blanco and urged them to make the evacuation mandatory (and according to one report even suggested earlier mobilization of the Louisiana Guard, which Blanco resisted). (UPDATE: According to this timeline the mandatory evacuation decision had already been made before Bush called. But there was some legal wrangling over the decision by Nagin: He was worried about the city's liability for closing hotels and businesses.)
• Post-Katrina satellite photos show hundreds of municipal and school buses sitting waterlogged in depots just a couple of miles from the Superdome. See here, here, and here.

No one seems to know yet why the buses weren't used to evacuate more people from the city as described in the plan, instead of sending thousands to the Superdome and other shelters. I've done some consulting work for the state of Georgia (unrelated to emergency planning), and in my experience these types of bad decisions are often driven by very mundane budgetary or legal considerations--exactly the types of roadblocks an effective executive must be poised to clear in an emergency situation. In the midst of a crisis, cutting red tape is the most important job of a president, governor, or mayor--certainly more important than making speeches, holding press conferences, or touring for the television cameras.

The buses may sit waterlogged instead of having been used to ferry people from the city because no one knew who's budget would be billed for driver time or fuel costs; or there weren't any licensed bus drivers available; or someone was worried about insurance liability or security for the drivers or some other simple consideration that wasn't detailed finely enough in the evacuation plan. At that point a Mayor Nagin needs to say, "Budgets, licenses, and insurance be damned! Get me 300 policemen to fuel-up and drive these buses. Call the TV stations and announce pickup points around the city--and tell people to bring food and water for a day! Call Houston and other cities and tell them we're coming!"

I emailed Preston Saturday night to point this out and asked him if anyone had figured out the real reason the buses weren't used. He disagreed that drivers or budgets might be the issue, responding:

I've wondered about the drivers issue too, but I came to the conclusion that since they're school buses, NO had a cadre of qualified drivers right there--school bus drivers. Since they're employed by the school system, and they have a supervisor, the city knows that it can reach them through that supervisor, who knows how to reach them. So the supervisor calls a pre-determined group of 5, who all then call a group of five each, etc etc until the city has at least tried to reach all of them. It's not perfect, but you'd get a majority of them. And in driving everyone else out, they drive themselves out too. Let them bring family, whatever. Just get them behind the wheel.

But as Preston agrees today while recounting our exchange (He's guest-blogging at Michelle Malkin's blog, but no link--guess next time I'll blog first and email later! UPDATE: That was just an oversight--thanks for the link, Bryan!), a smooth mobilization of school bus drivers can't be assumed since the school system is no exception in New Orlean's panoply of governmental dysfunction:

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the buildings are old and deteriorating.
...
"We've had to start over in some cases and recreate data from scratch," said Sajan George, an executive of New York-based Alvarez & Marsal. The rate of payroll errors when he arrived was around 20 percent, he said.
...
Budget problems forced closure of some schools and elimination of some classes at schools that remained open. It was unclear until a few weeks ago which schools would shut down.
...
Last spring, when the district appeared close to missing its payroll, the federal government said $70 million of its money couldn't be accounted for.
...
When a new budget was adopted in July, 800 jobs had to be eliminated. Five schools were to be closed, numerous others were involved in consolidations or relocations and some lost classes because enrollment has declined. And just two weeks ago, the budget adopted in July was found to be out of balance -- by perhaps as much as $48 million -- because revenue was overestimated and salaries and benefits were undercounted.
...
School board president Torin Sanders, who is black, denounced the plan as a means of "disenfranchising" those who elected him and other board members. But the board voted 4-3, with the three black members dissenting, to hire the firm.

UPDATE: More on the Orleans Parish school board and Mayor Ray Nagin's legal dickering over buses and liability.

Homes for Katrina Victims

Here's a list of sites matching Katrina victims with host families:

www.craigslist.org

katrinahomes.billhennessy.com

www.theopenhouseproject.org

www.hslda.com (Home school legal defense)

www.namb.net (Baptist North American Missions Boad)

www.hurricanehousing.org

www.pca-mna.org (PCA Mission to North America)

www.ajc.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Atlanta area only)

Since the major airlines are certainly about to ask for another massive federal bailout to prolong their profitless lives, perhaps they could sweeten the deal for us taxpayers by removing the restrictions on frequent flyer miles donated to transport Katrina victims to their new homes. We have enough miles to fly three or four people to the east coast if it wasn't for the 3-week advance purchase restriction on our MilesOne card miles.

Who Are The Real Looters?

Mr. Robert Person of Madison, Wisconsin thinks the real looters in every disaster are the gas and oil companies. He writes in a letter to the editor of the Capital Times (for some reason Yahoo News highlighted this):

In the immediate aftermath of the devastation, gasoline pump prices have gone up a huge amount. Now, it takes a month or more for oil to be refined and gasoline to be produced and delivered. Yet current pre-disaster stocks of gasoline are being sold at inflated prices. Who is the looter in this case? The oil companies? The marketers? The wholesalers? Are security forces out to nab them?

I've already explained why a gas station owner must raise prices as soon as his supply is interrupted and most of what I said applies here. Mr. Person seems to mistakenly assume that a single entity controls oil through the entire delivery and refining process. But oil and gasoline flow through networks of wholesalers and distributers just like other products. I'm not certain of this, but I wouldn't be surprised if most big oil companies like Exxon and BP have distribution franchises just like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola. They certainly have station franchises which take ownership of the gas delivered to them. Each entity in the supply line must respond to supply and pricing changes just like the service station owner at the retail end of the line. If you don't understand why go read my earlier post.

The second thing Mr. Person doesn't understand is that pricing must reflect current conditions as well as uncertainly about when those conditions will change. The gas flowing through retail pumps now may have been purchased before Katrina struck (though I seriously doubt the refining and delivery process takes a month), but prices started to rise before the hurricane struck to reflect the risk of a supply interruption. The interruption then became certain and prices rose further. They will remain high because no one knows exactly when or to what degree supply will be restored or what future demand will be. If you know in advance the price of gasoline for next month please tell me and we'll make a killing trading gasoline futures. (Right now the NYMEX says wholesale prices will be $2.40 per gallon in October--about $1 more than last October.)

Think about it this way: You're an English colonist at Jamestown. It's 1609 and your community is not yet self-sufficient. John Ratliff, the president of the colony is dead. You need regular shipments of supplies from England or you'll starve. You expected a ship to arrive in early September, but now it's mid-October, and there's no sign of the ship. It could have been delayed crossing the Atlantic. But it might have been sunk by the Spanish or captured by pirates. A difficult winter lies ahead. The summer harvest was poor--especially since John Rolfe wasted his time growing tobacco instead of corn--and without additional supplies many will starve. Do you A) Start conserving food now in case the ship never shows up; or B) Reason that there wasn't a shortage in August when you harvested the corn in the storehouse so you'll wait until the ship definitely doesn't show up to begin conserving? Congratulations if you chose option A. I'm sure Mr. Person would as well in those circumstances. The reason you chose option A is that the food you have now became more scarce/valuable/costly because of current conditions of supply, regardless of the conditions when you first obtained it.

Changing prices are the fastest, most accurate signal of current supply conditions at each level of distribution--so long as we let them work. And they work in reverse as well: When supply improves prices sometimes drop so quickly that sellers are forced to sell goods for less than they paid for them! That's one of the reasons companies are willing to invest billions of dollars streamlining supply chains and collecting oceans of data about who buys what, when, and for how much--because the more inventory stuck in their warehouses the more vulnerable they are to unfavorable supply and demand changes. Which is why accusing oil companies of secret conspiracies to shrink their inventories and artificially boost prices is so ludicrous--every major company on the planet has been trying to shrink their inventories for at least the past two decades!

Maybe next time I'll explain why people like Mr. Person and the politicians who pander to them are themselves the real looters!

Turf Wars Coming in Houston and San Antonio

Don't expect the Superdome violence to end with transfers to Houston and San Antonio. Let's be realistic: You scoop up 50,000 residents of the New Orleans ghetto, many now desperate for a fix, concentrate them in a new city and they become prime customers. Nor should we be surprised by gunshots and deaths in the Superdome. Most of these folks have probably lived with nightly gunshots and neighborhood murders their entire lives. It’s just that now the whole world is watching.

After reading Jason DeParle's Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare and Theodore Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom back to back a few months ago, I'd say this might--might--be the best chance the younger ones get to escape the ghetto for good. Relocation away from the old neighborhoods, either independently, by joining the military, or moving in with distant relatives seems to be the common characteristic of those who escaped their old lives. It all depends on where these kids end up.

UPDATE: An eyewitness account of just how bad things are at the Superdome.

UPDATE: Some more sad personal stories and pleas for help:

There are still approximately over 300 Vietnamese people stranded in sewage water up to the necks in many areas gathered at the Church. We've contacted USCG, Red Cross, news media but no help has come out to their way yet. As you all know, Versailles is so far on the eastern edge of New Orleans that by the time any helicopters come that way, they're already filled with people and have to turn back towards the Superdome to drop people off.

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My coworker's brother is one of seven doctors who have been left behind at Charity Hospital. His name is Vinroot, I'm sorry, I don't know the first name. He is in a panic--the doctors have barricaded themselves on the seventh floor because armed gunmen are outside threatening them and demanding access to the roof so they can be rescued first. He is desperate. Someone needs to help these people NOW!

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There are 7 people trapped in the Gallary Row apartments at 448 Julia Street (corner of Julia and Magazine). They were attacked by armed gang who hijacked their truck and drove it through a locked gate in the parking garage. They are unable to leave the building due to the heavy presence of large, well-organized armed looters. They expect the building to be attacked at any moment. The trapped people are lightly armed (one shotgun and one pistol) but there are numerous entry points into the apartments. Currently the trapped people are holed up on the roof. Please send help ASAP.

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University hospital has apparently slipped through the system and has yet to receive assistance as rescue efforts have been directed elsewhere. The hospital is absolutely non-functional and patients are dying at an alarming rate. My father in law (Dr. Oscar Ballester a treating physician at this hospital who is in need of food, water, and insulin) is stable, but we are unaware how long this will hold, possibly less than 48 hours.

Commissar Bush

Bush lumps so-called price-gouging with criminal activities such as looting and insurance fraud:

I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting, or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving, or insurance fraud, Bush said in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America.

But we still don't know what it is...and I guess price-gouging for coffee and bananas is still ok.

Commissar Perdue

Little did I know when writing last night's post defending so-called price gouging that Commissar Sonny Perdue was in the process of signing an executive order authorizing fines against price gougers! What does this mean, exactly? No one seems to know:

The governor gave no specific examples of price gouging but said prices at some stations rose from $3 per gallon to $5 and $6 per gallon by Wednesday afternoon. He acknowledged consumers may not always know if they are being gouged as gas prices change. "You just have to report this and our Office of Consumer Affairs will investigate," he said.

Meanwhile, "price gouging" was working exactly as I described in my last post:

John Harper, an east Cobb County resident, pulled up to a gas station in Stockbridge Wednesday evening when he saw an enticing empty parking lot. He promptly turned around once he the manager told him the gas prices - $5.87 for a gallon of unleaded fuel. "It's highway robbery," Harper said. He was one of a half-dozen people who left after pulling up to the station. Soon after, the gas station manager decided to lower the gas prices by $2 a gallon.

And stations that weren't "price gouging", including the Kroger station behind our house, ran out of gas:

Police in Sandersville had to direct traffic during a mid-morning rush on the pumps after two small stations ran out of gas, Police Chief John Harden said. In Washington, long lines for gas stretched into the town's main street, disrupting traffic.

Gas Prices Need to Rise Faster!

There's often a pretty simple principle at work when stores raise prices in the aftermath of natural disasters: Their supply chain is interrupted too. This article quotes a gas station owner in Muncie, Indiana, who had a three-day supply of gas in his tanks on Monday. For the past two days he could only buy 40 percent of his normal daily volume. He needs a steep price increase just to keep paying his bills. Let's say he normally sells 5,000 gallons of gas per day (I'm making these numbers up), earning a gross profit of 25 cents per gallon, or $1,250 per day. From this he pays $750 of overhead--rent, taxes, employee salaries, maintenance, etc--to keep his station running, leaving $500 of net profit with which he can improve his business (new state-of-the-art touchless carwashes and such) and pay his own living expenses. Along comes a hurricane which disrupts the entire supply chain, and he can only buy 2,000 gallons of gas per day. He needs to earn $750 per day just to break even, which works out to 37 cents for each gallon of gas in his daily inventory. He still needs to feed his family so he bumps up the price another 10 cents to earn a net profit of $200 per day. This is on top of his suppliers' own 25 cent price increase. Voila! He's an evil price gouger responsible for a 47 cent price hike with TV stations shooting his marquee for their stock high-gas-price-stories and politicians accusing him of criminal conduct. Meanwhile the station owner is living on 40 percent of his normal income, knowing that if his supply dries up completely for a few days he won't be able to pay his mortgage. On the demand side are those who rush out to fill up four 55-gallon drums with gas at the first hint of a shortage (described in the same article). This gas will likely sit in someone's garage while other people wait in line for 20 gallons to make it to work for the week. A faster price increase cuts down on such hoarding and waste. If the 55-gallon-drum-guy really needs 220 gallons of gas--maybe he's a business owner himself with a small fleet of trucks to run--he will gladly pay the higher price. Otherwise, he's more likely to leave the gas available for someone who needs it.

People who complain about price gouging and demand price controls are really asking for someone else to bear all the pain of a disaster rather than letting market pricing spread the pain equally.

Jumping to the Front of the Idiot Queue

Woman in front of gym TV: "We just have to figure out a way to stop these [hurricanes], whether it's global warming that's causing them or whatever!"

TV News anchor (repeatedly referring to a TV shot of a construction site crane): "I can't believe that crane withstood the hurricane-force winds of Katrina!"
(Yes, quite amazing for a thin, relatively aerodynamic structure designed to withstand massive shearing loads!)

Cindy Sheehan: George W. Bush to blame for Katrina!

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: George W. Bush and Haley Barbour to blame for Katrina!

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson: Oil companies should freeze gas prices!

CA Sen. Joe Dunn (explaining why California imposing gasoline price controls won't cause shortages): "The only reason we would have long gas lines is if this industry deliberately does that to the consumers of California. There is no competitive reason why, with price caps for example, we would have gasoline lines." (maybe "asserting" is a better description)

A whole bunch more economic illiterates: Cap fuel prices!

Hawaiian Legislature: Hooray! We've capped gas prices!

Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights: Oil Companies' Profiteering to Blame for Gas Price Spike!

Sorry, I just had to get those off my chest.

New Orleans - 1718 - 2005

New Orleans is gone. You can't take an entire city offline for 4-6 months and expect the entire population of people and businesses to return. Businesses will either close or relocate. People will need to find new homes and jobs in other cities. How many will return when the city is finally cleaned up? My guess is that the population of New Orleans--500,000 just a few days ago--will be less than 100,000 at this time next year.

This PBS interview (PDF) with John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide, on the Mississippi flood of 1927, has an interesting quote that explains why engineers couldn't close the breach in the levee protecting the city from Lake Pontchartrain:

Well, you've got to understand that when there's a crevasse, it's not simply the water flowing over the top of the levee as if it were overflowing a bath tub. What you get is tremendous turbulence, unbelievable forces at work, and in a great crevasse the river will gouge out a hole in the earth and the greatest crevasse on record, which was in 1927 about 15 miles north of Greenville, Mississippi, you know, the hole in the levee was about two-thirds of a mile wide. And they sounded it with a hundred-foot line and found no bottom. It was later they figured out that it was 130 feet deep.

No wonder the 3,000 pound sand bags disappeared as fast as they could drop them in the hole.

The Coming Phone Number Crisis

Bad news. We may run out of phone numbers again. Those of us living in large metro areas have experienced the pain of phone number shortages before. In the '90s they made us dial area codes for local calls and blamed the fax machines. Next they added new area codes and blamed the cell phones. Who's the next culprit, you ask? Pre-paid number-squatters. Let me explain: I opened a T-Mobile pay-as-you-go account last week and they promised to transfer my Cingular pre-paid number within 24 hours. Six days later it still hadn't been transferred so I called them today. The T-Mobile customer rep said she can't transfer my number unless I add minutes to my Cingular account. Why? Because "inactive" numbers can't be transferred. But, I protested, that number is still assigned to my old phone so if I never add minutes that number will be tied to my old phone forever! And if everyone does that you'll eventually run out of phone numbers! "I'm sorry. The FCC makes us do it that way," she said. "Besides there aren't very many pre-paid accounts yet anyway." Disaster is coming. Just wait.

Statistically Famous

I avoid TV news whenever possible, but that's tough at the gym. Today during my lunchtime workout Fox News featured a man who has been struck by lightning four times. "Your chances of being struck by lightning are just 1 in 3,000," breathlessly intoned the anchoress. "And your chance of being struck twice is only 1 in 9 million! I'm not even going to try to calculate the chances of being struck four times like this man!" Don't worry ma'am we can do that heavy liftin' for you. A specific person has just 1 chance in 3,000 x 3,000 x 3,000 x 3,000 (or 81 trillion) of being struck by lightning during his lifetime. That's pretty unlikely. However, the chance that someone, somewhere in the United States will be struck by lightning four times so Fox News can fill 10 minutes of air time is significantly higher--about 1 chance in 270,000. Why? Because there are roughly 300 million people in the US which gives us 300 million chances in 81 trillion that one of them will score the quad. And the chance of this happening to someone in the world rises to roughly 1 in 13,500 (six billion chances in 81 trillion). Further, the 1 in 3,000 chance we started with is averaged across a mostly risk-averse population. If you enjoy watching thunderstorms from the top of the Empire State Building you're guaranteed to be struck more than four times--a lot more! This guy lays steel water pipes for a living, which seems like a more strike-prone profession than most, especially if you don't know when to knock-off!

Why Blogs Beat The MSM: Exhibit 9,872

The NARAL smear ad that associates John Roberts with abortion clinic bombings gives us a great example of just how bad the MSM is at providing useful and relevant information. Here's the Washington Post version published the morning after the story broke. Headline: Ad Campaign Says Roberts Backed Violent Protesters. So right off the bat anyone who is simply scanning the paper gets the message pushed by the NARAL ad. Read the article and what do you learn?

• A repeat of the headline message, and a generic denial by Robert's supporters
• A convoluted summary of the legal situation referred to by the ad
• A description of the message and text of the ad
• He-said, she-said style quotes from supporters of both Roberts and NARAL
• A claim by "Robert's allies" that he has never supported violence

Browse over to Powerline's post on the story from the same morning and you learn the following additional information that the Post deemed unimportant:

• The legal case referenced by the ad (Bray v. Alexandria Clinic) and a link to the Supreme Court's decision in the matter
• A clearer (in my opinion) explanation of Robert's role in the case
• The Bray case had nothing to do with bombing or violence of any kind, or with supporting a clinic bomber. The clinic bombing mentioned by the ad occurred eight years after Bray--and therefore the NARAL ad is a flat-out lie.
• Why the government filed a brief supporting the protesters: Because a Supreme Court decision against them could have started a chain of legal inference leading the courts to eventually overturn all federal laws excluding abortion services from medical assistance programs (such as Medicaid, I'm assuming) on the grounds that exclusion of abortion services is discriminatory toward women.
• The real story is that pro-abortion groups are willing to brazenly lie to prevent even the chance of any restrictions on abortion

UPDATE: Mini-kudos to the Post for finally getting most of these facts straight in it's editorial today.

Stick to the Point on Iraq

Today someone sent me this email (supposedly from a policeman) comparing the causalty rate in Iraq to the homicide rate in Washington, D.C.:

INTERESTING THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000. The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington, D.C.

Whoever made these calculations is quite wrong on some points and sloppy or misleading on others. Washington's homicide rate peaked around 80 per 100,000 residents in 1991 and was in the mid-forties or so from 1998-2003 before dropping a bit lower in 2004.

The killed-in-action rate in Iraq for US troops (with 1820 deaths as of this writing and assuming an average of 150,000 troops over 2.3 years) works out to 527 per 100,000 per year. Most of them were killed by bombs, not firearms, so perhaps the "firearm death rate" could be 60 per 100,000, but even if correct that's certainly a misleading way to describe things. A bigger problem is that it doesn't include the troops of other nations or Iraqi police and civilians. It also doesn't consider the problems inherent in comparing a small city with an entire country the size of California. The fighting and terrorist attacks in Iraq are concentrated in a few cities which are very dangerous while much of the country is relatively stable and prospering.

What we really should care about are the relative consequences of not having invaded (or withdrawing to soon), which are obviously in dispute. But there are two indisputable points which (I think) can clarify one's thinking on the war. First, we simply don't yet know the long-term consequences of the war (positive or negative). We may begin to see a clearer picture in five or ten years when the current players have passed from the scene, a bit more in 20-30 after their memoirs have been studied and digested, and will perhaps have the final word in 50-100 years. The late Stephen Ambrose wrote in the acknowledgments to Undaunted Courage that he decided to write the biography of Meriwether Lewis in 1993, despite a comprehensive work having been published in 1965 by Richard Dillon, because a significant amount of new research had come to light in the intervening 30 years. Think about that. The Lewis and Clark expedition has been one of the most studied episodes of early American history, especially when you contrast its scale with a major war. Yet after 170 years new information about the expedition was still being discovered! Another example: Yesterday marked 60 years since the bombing of Hiroshima. The full set of radio intercepts that formed the basis for Truman's assessment of Japanese military strength and political will, on which he based his decision to drop the bomb, was not released to the public until 1995 (the first, redacted version was made available in 1978). Various additional papers from the Joint Chiefs of Staff which shed light on the decision (and the alternative costs of invading Japan) continued to trickle out over the last decade.

That's why the left's early and frequent proclamations of failure in the Iraq war are foolishly irresponsible at best. Not only is there ample contrary evidence, but the outcome is under decision right now! And that brings me to my second point: Whether you originally believed that removing Saddam Hussein from power would help destroy militant Islam or not, Iraq is where the Islamists have chosen to fight! So who do you believe? Those on the left who have declared the rationale for the war fraudulent, the effort doomed to failure, and victory irrelevant to defeating militant Islam? Or the Islamists themselves who through their words and actions have declared reclamation of Iraq essential to their survival?

Meaninglessness

Henry Blodget divines John Roberts jurisprudential predilections from his investment portfolio and it's unintentionally quite funny. Blodget, once the patron analyst of greater fools, famously predicted in October of 1998 that Amazon.com's stock price would soon reach $400. The stock did shoot past $360--up 300% from when Blodget made his prediction--but never matched Blodget's target. Amazon's share price eventually fell to an all-time low of $7 in 2001 and for the past year has traded near $40. Keep that in mind as you read the article.

Journalists, politicians, and activists are scouring the legal writings of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts for insight into potential future rulings, but perhaps another kind of examination would reveal even more about his character. Does Roberts act rationally, or is he hotblooded and emotional? Is he prudent and patient, or a compulsive gambler in search of the next big score? Does he think for himself or follow the herd? Can he manage conflicts of interest? Roberts' legal writings offer only tentative answers to these questions. But his financial records supply clear ones.

But the answers can't be be too clear because Blodget admits just a few lines later that Robert's financial-disclosure runs only through 2003 and that

The disclosure form doesn't give an exact value for each asset, only a range (i.e., $15,000 to $50,000 or $250,000 to $500,000). At the end of 2003, Roberts' assets were worth as little as $3 million and as much as $7 million. (Given that the stock market has soared since then, the net worth could now be in the $10 million range.)

And what does this hazy vista into Robert's soul tell us about his future judgments? Quite a lot, apparently.

So, what do Roberts' investments say about him? He is rich, but not so rich that the $200,000 Supreme Court justice salary would feel like chump change. Still, he will be comfortable hobnobbing with other capitalists-turned-public servants in Washington (for whom $200,000 is chump change). Roberts benefits or will benefit from virtually all the various Bush tax cuts, from income to dividends to capital gains to estate taxes.

Aha! Roberts benefited from the Bush tax cuts! We've got him pegged, then! He's one of them. The filthy capitalists. He might even extend eminent domain for the benefit of Bush's corporate cronies! (Never mind that everyone who pays taxes benefited from the cuts!) Or maybe this is a payoff! Roberts must have agreed to serve on the Supreme Court to pay Bush back for those tax cuts! Err...or something like that.

His fortune is self-made, which suggests a bias toward self-reliance rather than entitlements and subsidies.

Of course! Just like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros, and the other billionaires who campaigned against the Bush capital gains tax cut and/or support a host of other tax increases and liberal causes.

Roberts' one-eighth share of the cottage in Limerick (worth less than $15,000), combined with an investment in the "New Ireland Fund" (also less than $15,000) suggest a possible Gaelic fetish.

Ummm, sure Henry. And that tells us what, exactly? That he'll take it easy on terrorist-funding organizations to avoid bolluxin' up the musha for his Sin Fein coozins? Now that would be a fine thing, sha?

Roberts' stock and mutual-fund holdings in 2003 were highly diversified, consisting of domestic and international stocks in multiple industries. In keeping with Roberts' reputation for prudence, the equities consisted primarily of dividend-paying blue chips like Coca Cola (less than $15,000), AT&T (less than $15,000, sold), Merck (less than $15,000), etc. Those who view Roberts as a robotic starched-shirt, however, should note evidence of a romantic-idealist streak: a chunk of XM Satellite Radio worth between $100,000 and $250,000. This bizarrely out-of-character investment suggests that Roberts is either clairvoyant or not afraid to dream: The stock is up tenfold since early 2003.

Prudent blue-chipper or starry-eyed dreamer--you can have it both ways with Blodget who, when banned from the securities industry by the SEC, was found to have mocked the same stocks he was pumping for the public, in his private emails at Merrill-Lynch.

Also in keeping with Roberts' clean-cut, churchgoing image, his investments did not include companies in vice industries (gaming, drinking, smoking, etc.). If Roberts ascribes to the Peter Lynch-school of amateur investing--buy what you know--one might thereby infer that he is not a chain-smoking boozer who is forever sneaking off to Atlantic City. One might also conclude that he will instinctively frown on rulings that make life easier for gaming, smoking, and drinking companies (Wall Street take note!).

Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to sell my sin stocks before Roberts gets on the bench. By the way, does that mean that if Robert Bork had only been fortunate enough to have a secret penchant for S & M flicks (instead of old classics) he would have been enthusiastically endorsed by the liberals who investigated his video rentals? On the theory that, you know, he watches porn so he doesn't really mean it when he warns that America is slouching toward Gomorrah thanks to judicial liberalism?

Roberts' stock portfolio is a conflict-of-interest nightmare. If Roberts continues to own all these stocks, he may have to recuse himself from many cases before the Supreme Court. (While in private practice in 2003, Roberts represented 19 states in their antitrust suit against Microsoft. Yet his 2003 financial disclosure form shows Roberts holding $100,000 to $250,000 worth of Microsoft stock.)

Well, people do tend to slightly reorganize their personal lives when they, oh, say, get elected President or CONFIRMED TO THE FREAKIN' SUPREME COURT!

On the whole, Roberts' investment choices suggest that his financial character is much like his legal one. In investing, he tends to accept prevailing conventional wisdom--which, in the case of the financial markets, often changes and is often wrong--and to apply it with above-average competence.

That's right. We know that conservatives are all little lemmings who just follow the swarm. Roberts is just a fast lemming...or would that be a slow lemming? On the plus side, he certainly can't be filibustered if he's this mainstream!

For example, to his credit, Roberts does not appear to have made the usual boneheaded mistakes of the late 1990s--assuming that "diversified" meant owning the stocks of eight fiber-optic companies instead of one, for example, or betting his entire 401(k) on one stock. He also does not seem unduly vulnerable to the alternating influences of fear and greed: He did not quit the market in a panic in mid-2003 or bet the farm on Internet stocks in mid-1999 (or, if he did, he jettisoned the evidence). Instead, he maintained a diversified portfolio and, largely, held onto it through thick and thin.

Boneheaded mistakes? Hmmm. Like when super-stock-analyst Blodget plowed $700,000 into Internet stocks just a few months before the bursting bubble splattered his net worth all over Wall Street?

Still, Roberts' investment decisions do not show evidence of the rigorous, summa cum laude analytical skill that he is said to evince on the legal side. Either his own choices--or those of his investment advisers--suffer from common-but-flawed thinking.

Investment advisor? Wait a minute! You mean all this prognosticating may not even be based on Robert's own investment decisions? You mean we could just be predicting what kind of a Supreme Court justice cousin Harry the financial advisor back in Buffalo would make?!

Roberts' stock portfolio, for example, is actually too diversified: He holds so many positions that the benefits of diversification are likely lost to trading and administration costs (monitoring the well-being of 40-odd stocks is more time-consuming than monitoring the well-being of 10), and the portfolio is so representative of the market that it might as well be the market. A wise investment adviser would tell Roberts to sell all his stocks and buy one low-cost index fund instead.

Forty stocks is too diversified? It might as well be the market? A wise advisor would recommend index funds? If Blodget had been telling people the exact opposite of that a few years ago he might still have a job in the securities industry!

As for his fund and stock selection, Roberts does show some susceptibility to peer pressure--aka, what the majority thinks is smart at any given time. Positions in Cisco, Time Warner, Dell, Lucent, and PMC Sierra suggest that Roberts did not maintain iconoclastic clearheadedness through the 1990s but instead bought into the "do-it-yourself" stock-picking craze. Similarly, in 2003, when the mass of investors shied away from individual equities, he sold several stocks (at a bad time) and replaced them with funds. Roberts also owns a lot of high-cost, actively managed mutual funds, which suggests blind acceptance of the common-but-erroneous belief that professional investors usually beat the market (they don't). As with the individual stock holdings, Roberts would be well-advised to sell most of his high-cost active funds and add money to his few, low-cost index funds.

Bottom line? Roberts the investor is smart and conservative but, like most of us, prone to following the herd.

Aye yi yi! And there you have it: Roberts is a prudential, conflicted, diversified, non-iconoclastic, sometimes fuzzy-headed, starry-eyed dreamer who follows conventional wisdom (or lemmings--I forget which), stays the course, and is susceptible to peer pressure. Wait a minute? Was this about Sandra Day O'Conner's rulings or her replacement? I'm so confused!