Random Katrina Thoughts

• Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) says, "[T]he $10.5 billion being approved by Congress to aid the hurricane victims so far won't rebuild "one corner, one block."

I'd heard about New Orlean's corruption problem, but I had no idea it was this bad! Much, much worse than even the United Nations!

• From Reuters (of course): Sri Lankan Sajeewa Chinthaka, on post-Katrina looting and disorder: "I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering. Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

Hmm. Didn't I recently read that much of the tsunami aid to Sri Lanka was still sitting on the docks pending bribes to Sri Lankan customs officials? Yep, here's yet another report from just a few weeks ago:

To some it is scandalous (to others inevitable) that Oxfam had to pay close to $1 million to Sri Lankan customs officials before their four-wheel drive vehicles were allowed in the country to deliver relief.

While these vehicles stood in port, Oxfam was charged around $5,000 a day -- all for the privilege of helping victims.

It is reminiscent of Col. Mengistu's regime charging duty on aid coming into Ethiopia during the 1984 famine, then diverting food aid to the army.

It gets worse. A dozen UNICEF ambulances sent to Indonesia spent two months idle on the dock.

Huge containers of drinking water sent by the Red Cross in January, are reported to still be in the port because their documentation can't be found.

Some 25% of the aid sent to Sri Lanka since the tsunami still sits in containers in Colombo, and a thousand large containers of aid are sit unopened and unprocessed, in the port of Medan.

• From the same Reuters piece: Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people.

On the left is Lake Pontchartrain. On the right (same scale), the entire country of Luxembourg. Need I say more?

• Finally, many newspapers have gone overboard in their criticisms of the government response to Katrina, calling the effort worthy of a third-rate nation. Sure, some New Orleans, Lousiana, and FEMA officials appear to have made major mistakes. But let's be realistic: If the United States was actually a third-rate (or third-world if that's the implication) nation we would be looking at a tsunami-size death toll in the tens of thousands. So let's be thankful, as we mourn, that we do have the tremendous resources and wealth to save so many lives that would otherwise have been lost.

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?