Policy Analysis - Cash For Clunkers

I think that the Cash For Clunkers is a good idea; it can help reduce pollution, reduce our consumption of gas, and boost the economy by helping the auto makers and dealers. The program was so successful that they used up the first $1 billion in a week! Now congress is considering adding another $2 billion to the program to keep it going.

I think that there should be some effort to sit back and think through how this could be modified to be more targeted and effective. Are people exploiting a loophole in the program? Are rich people using this more than poor? are the cars being brought in really cars that are in use? Would a smaller subsidy be just as effective? Is there away to encourage the purchase of American cars? Who is benefiting - the car buyers or the car dealers?

The policy wonk in me thinks it is a bit premature to just give it another $2 billion. While there was some pent up demand, I suspect that this $2 billion would be gone in no time and that the need is large, a huge number of people need new cars and are driving old ones. How can we get more bang for our buck?

A HOOT & A HALF!!!!!!!

"I'm fabulous. I'm an incredible dresser, I've got buckets of money, I'm a hoot & a half and I've got a killer rack. You get what I'm saying?"

I love FOUND magazine and website. This note above was FOUND by Kristen Reifenstuhl in Portland, OR.

Career Blog - Too Much Information

I read the blog Brazen Careerist from time to time. I got interested in it because the founder Penelope Trunk lives in Madison, is a parent, blogger, blah blah blah.

This seems like an odd blog in that she talks about generic career advice about things like how to generate investors in your start-up company but she also has personal stuff. Wow. This recent post has way too much deep personal information. I don't even know what to say, you have to read it. I can maybe see why someone may write about this personal stuff to friends or on some sort of support network site but for a popular blogger with 1000s of readers to let her most difficult life experiences hang out there seems a bit nuts.

I don't think she is really saying, people should not be so private on their blogs but here is my life and help me by listening and writing supportive things.

Policy - Political Dream

You know you are policy wonk when you dream about health care policy.

In my dream I was talking with my in-laws about the Democratic health care plan and they were saying that they did not like it. I was very calm and put forth a very persuasive argument that made them change their minds.

I expanded on a point that Hillary Clinton made on Meet the Press on Sunday. I said this plan will help small businesses. Did you know that 15 years ago 60% of small businesses provide health insurance to their employees and now only around 30% do because it is becoming so expensive. I spoke about my personal experience being on the board of a cooperative grocery store and explained that the cost for the store to keep providing insurance to our employees kept rising and made it difficult for us to make a profit.

I know part of my reason for having this dream is that while most of my Facebook friends are liberal democrats like me, one friend has been posting some anti-Obama health plan stuff lately and I have been too chicken to try to counter their points.

In thinking about my dream discussion, one question I have regarding the current proposals. The current proposals include "a payroll tax — as much as 8 percent of wages — on employers who do not provide health insurance to workers". What I am wondering is how much do most small and large businesses who do provide health insurance pay for that insurance for their employees. What percentage of wages do they pay and if it is more than 8% wouldn't many of them choose to not provide it anymore and just let the employees get the government insurance? Whether or not employees like this option would likely depend on how good the government insurance is. If it is like Medicaid and Medicare, it is not too bad. Going this way would save companies a lot of hassle in that they would not need to shop around for insurance for employees, etc. Also, employees could get a health care supplement with they money they money that most workers pay as a co-pay. I may be wrong here but I would like to know what the analysis has shown on this.

Stop watching Michael Jackson and Octomom- shame on us

I read today that Nadya Suleman signed a deal to film her life for a new reality TV show. Her family will get $250,000 for the deal over 3 years.

I'll admit that I was somewhat fascinated by her story when it first came out but for any American to watch this show is morally wrong and it is wrong for any production company to film it and put it on the air. There is so much wrong with her story and it is almost impossible to imagine things with her family going well. Even if she gets lots of help and money. Being a parent of a few healthy kids is stressful and hard enough. This woman needs help in many ways and it is exploitative for us to watch this sad train wreck happen before our eyes.

I also am ashamed of us that we keep talking about Michael Jackson's sad life. After he died it was OK to celebrate his life and talent. He was a great artist. Then we should let it go. I am not a huge TV watcher or radio listener but I have heard too many trickles about him and his strange life. Let him rest in peace. Everyone talking about him is talking out of their ass, very few people know first hand about what issues he dealt with and what he really did and how he dealt with it. The news media, radio, magazines, TV shows, everyone should just shut the fuck up. Even Stephanie Miller talked about his fake nose today. What possible good can come from this type of talk?

Uncle Leo's Secret Life!?

I’ve been listening to some old This American Life eposodes and I've been reading my daughter Harry Potter #2 and now I wonder if there is some deep family secret that I never knew about.

Who are you and why do you care what I have to say?

I use Google Analytics to track hits on my blog. It is kind of cool and I like that you can see how many hit you get each day and folks who link to you. I am not sure why I care and don't find it very useful. What I have learned I think is that many people will stumble across a web by mistake. They do some search and end up there.

Here is weird one, the #4 city from which readers come from: Pelotas, Brazil. It seems sort of cool and somewhat creepy to think that people you don't know from across the globe are looking at what I write. I know that is the point of a blog but with the whole identify theft thing I am some paranoid about privacy issues and that is why I have limited personal info on here.

Perhaps the Pelotas folks got here because I wrote about the scandal about the NY Times photos from Edgar Martins that they took down. Martins is Portuguese/ they speak Portuguese in Brazil.

Writing this blog is sort of like writing a letter to an anonymous international pen pal and I never know if he reads the letters and I never get anything back from him.

I have to get me one of these.....

check out the preview of this movie coming out next year, it looks pretty funny. And it has Craig Robinson from the office and John Cusack. Great title too.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Generic Drug Safety

Have you heard these ads for Tylenol that claim not only that Tylenol is a great pain reliever but they imply that store brand or generic acetaminophen is not as effective or safe as real Tylenol? This bothers me because I have never heard this and doubt that there is any validity to this claim. I would like to see any scientific information to support this. It is very dangerous if this convinces the public that they should not use generics because it would cost people a huge amount more and many drug plans won't cover the cost of buying brand name meds if a generic is available. If there was some validity to this, the FDA should not allow for these dangerous less effective drugs to be sold.

Tracking Trash

In an interesting real world experiment a group of MIT researchers are putting small tracking devices into trash to see where it travels to. They are asking volunteers in NY City and Seattle to attach these electronic tags to their trash and they will use cell tower signals to find where they go. I read about this on Freakonmics blog.

My guess is that trash will stay pretty local if you put it in a traditional garbage can at home or in a public place but NYC trash may travel further because there are not many landfills near NYC. Electronics may travel farther if they are put into a e-waste collection system or recycling facility. Recycling materials will also go to a local recycling facility for sorting, etc. but I wonder if it will be crushed too much to work as the raw material makes its way to sale and into new stuff. Stay tuned.

Delicious Affordable Indian Cart - 2 blocks from my office : )

I am very happy that the Spice Yatra food cart is back at the Square. Apparently the owner, Sunil Gopal, did not have a kitchen to prepare the food, but now he is back at the Square in front of Starbucks. YES!

Apparently Linda Falkenstein is not a big fan of burgers but she knows good Indian food and helped the owner of this cart get things going this year.

There are three awesome vegetarian options, which are all spicy, generous and delicious and all come with rice; no Roti : (

Don't Send Her to Review a Burger Place

Isthmus writer Linda Falkenstein did a "review" of the new Sonic restaurant that opened on University Ave in Middleton. Too much of the article talks about how she likes fast food fish sandwiches and they don't have one at Sonic. Check out the comments from many folks who agree that she should have had a burger and wrote about it. I don't even eat meat but I did not like this review either.

Maybe she should go back to McDondalds but they don't bring the food to your car. I love the Culver's cod sandwich by the way.

too much of a great thing?

I wonder if an artist can produce too much of their work for fans to enjoy? I was thinking of bands but it could apply to writers or painters or other artists too. Some musicians have been around for many years and have many fans and some have a limited number of orginal songs and albums and some keep writing and recording for years and years and fans can't keep up. Which is better, for a band to have a limited number 5-10 normal size albums of original material or go crazy and record 10, 20, 30 albums. I am thinking of a few bands I like but I could not keep up with their work include: Bob Dylan, Phish, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Rolling Stones. Of course there are some die hard fans who know every album, every song, but that would take some serious hard core dedication. Can a brilliant artist be brilliant and creative and orginal for 100s of songs? Part of the problem is that many fans don't keep up and then the concerts are not that satisfying for many fans because the artist plays many songs that the fans don't know.

Other artists have a discography that is more manageable. Part of the reason is that some bands broke up and only were together for a more limited time. Some that come to mind include: Talking Heads, Police, Violent Femmes, Pixies, Beastie Boys, and even the Grateful Dead. I know the Dead have a million albums but most are live recordings of the same songs. The Dead played together for almost 30 years and I found a count of only 13 studio albums most of which are normal albums with 8-9 songs. Some of the writers I like have only written a pretty limited amount and I like that: JD Salinger of course, Tom Robbins, Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides. Can a great writer write 30 books?

Deli Sandwich with Mayo?!

Do you think that someone who is raised Jewish, even if they were not raised kosher, who every grows to like the taste of Mayonaise on a sandwich. Can a Jew ever enjoy a Turkey, Cheese and Mayo sandwich? I am not a good person to ask since I am a vegetarian but I have never liked the idea or taste of mayo on any sandwich.

Insert Joke Here

Beer truck with 44,000 pounds of beer overturns in Madison; highway closed.

Hot Teen Sex You Betcha!

Have you seen this....Midwest Teen Sex Show. I have watched/ listened to a couple so far but this seems like very good way to teach sex ed. Some seem sort of tame and silly (locker rooms) and some are more hard core. They are not safe for work unless you only listen with headphones but then you miss some of the fun.

I don't know the whole story behind this but these folks have made 25 or so videos that are about real sex ed type topics produced by young (maybe college age) women. They are very funny especially with great titles, props (hot dogs and pudding), costumes (wigs) and great "Fargo" accents but have good advice for teens or anyone having sex. It is a cross between Kids in the Hall, MadTV, Savage Lovecast, My So Called Life, and porn. Even if you don't think you have anything to learn about sex, they are really funny even for a middle aged parent person thinking back to those awkward years.

I found this after reading this Salon Broadsheet about great feminist website by real teenager - The F-Bomb.

The Time Traveler's Wife is one of my all time favorite books. While the premise seems a bit goofy the book is very cool, interesting in a sci-fi way, sad, romantic, funny and hip at the same time. I also like the music taste and Chicago connections in the book.

Like all best sellers, they turned it into a movie. Here is the trailer. Like all great novels, it should not be made into a movie. This has totally change my mind's view of the story. The trailer gives away many of the most important parts, which should not matter if you read the book, but I would have liked to wait until I see the movie to see how they show those scenes on screen. I can't decide if I want to see it or not.

It seems funny that Henry DeTamble is played by Eric Bana who I had not heard of until I saw the latest Star Trek. He played the super scary villain who is still giving me nightmares.

Authentic LA

I heard about this Authentic LA place today on NPR sounds awesome. Clifton's Cafeteria Cool website.

Anyone been there and want to report on it? How is the crowd? how is the food?

so fun......

Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope to us.

And we'll send you either a Clifton's souvenir pen,
refrigerator magnet, note pad or bookmark

Target at Hilldale?

The owners of Hilldale Mall have been talking with Target about opening a store where the Whole Foods was going to go.

My thoughts:

It is a big spot and something has to go there.

I travel west or southwest to go to Target sometimes (this weekend - see below) and it would save me some gas/ time. Many other people who live downtown, campus, near west, Shorewood Hills do the same.

It is "in-fill" in that it is not a sprawling part of the Madison metro area and would keep people and investment in-town. This can help support investment and property values in nearby parts of Madison that are struggling a bit.

Has potential to be an innovative new urbanest designed site that is foot, bike and bus friendly. Many people could come on alt transportation and that would be good.

With this store and improved bus access to the area, this area of town could easily be one where people could live in a home or apartment without a car. That would be good.

If it had a grocery store, it would compete with Sentry and Coops directly. Not good for those stores. Whether or not a grocery is included, they should design this so you can easily shop at both Target and Hilldale without having to park 2 times. You should be able to park, go to Target for some shopping, walk to Sentry shop more and then to your car. More should be done to make crossing the intersection on foot safer and more convenient too.

It would bring a lot of traffic but I don't think it would be that much worse than it is now. Rush hour is bad now at that intersection and it could be a bit worse but people visit Target a lot at night and weekends when the intersection and the mall is not that busy with traffic now. Many people driving by intersection are on there way to other Target or similar big box shops further out.

Some of the new traffic will be welcome traffic. We want people to come to Madison as a destination and with this store some folks will come "into" Madison to shop, eat, see a movie, etc. when under the current landscape they may go to West Towne area, Fitchburg or Middleton to shop and eat at restaurants out there. Many retail shops and restaurants in Madison and even at the new Hilldale are struggling. While this store would compete with them, it may help them by bringing more people into Madison to spend $.

While the owners of the mall have invested lots of money and we have many new stores, I don't think we should take it forgranted that this mall will strive forever. The old Hilldale was on the verge of collapse and shopping areas are struggling across the country (see this and this). We need this to be vibrant retail destination for many reasons (property tax $ for schools is one).

I don't think that the city should help out much with TIF $ or other incentives. Target competes with local in-town businesses and the city should not help them hurt local shops. The city should not put up unreasonable barriers in the plan approval process. If this lot is tagged for retail we should provide a clear process for gaining city approval of the proposed store and parking area. We want a high quality plan and don't want a big ugly box in a sea of asphalt but we don't want to lose the Target if delays in the approval take too long and if we ask for expensive extras and then the lot could sit vacant for many years to come and become like Chicago's infamous Block 37.

Regulate Blog Marketing? Not Necessary

I have written a few times (political blogs, other thoughts) about whether or not bloggers should disclose conflicts of interest or whether they are being paid to write about something.

There is a NY Times article on this topic today which mentions the FTCs possible policing of this practice. Prandya Joshi's article "Approval by a Blogger May Please a Sponsor" taught me a few things about how this business works.

It also taught me that there are a lot of people who are not like me. I would not even think of reading a blog that talked about cosmetics or shopping. Why do these people have 1000s of readers and who wants to read that kind of stuf?

That said, the more I think about this it seems unnecessary to regulate this and may not be even needed in most cases to disclose. Who would even read a blog if all had on it was a bunch of positive reviews of products which are basically just ads? People only read a blog if it had honest interesting information and good writing. Readers are smart. If a blogger constantly wrote BS reviews of crap products, who would want to read that? People should know that bloggers may be getting perks or paid and take what they read with a grain of salt.

I think the bloggers who spend all day trying to get these marketing deals and negotiate with ad agencies are smart if they are successful but will turn into boring marketing machines that no real person one will want to follow if they are not careful. I personally want to read a person's true stories about their life and views and not tweets about some conference they spoke at about how to make money off your blog.

The FTC will never be able to police this and should not waste money trying. What is the worst that will happen? I will buy some diapers that some blogger wrote about and they will leak and I will get poop on my shirt (oh wait that happened yesterday and I have no one to blame). So if anyone wants to send me free diapers I will gladly write a glowing review.

The status quo before blogs and other web tools was that there was almost no honest way to learn about products and companies other than by word of mouth or Consumer Reports. I would not want to do anything to limit the free flow of information.

My 7 week old baby and I went to Target and bought....

One Lampshade

Four jars of Pastel Play dough

Crayola Poster Paint

Three Cans of SpaghettiOs

One small photo album

Three stylish Short Sleeve Collared Shirts for me

Four stylish t-shirts for me

One bottle of peach iced tea

Tom's Natural Toothpaste



Little guy slept most of the time but cryed too much on way home : (

I (Heart) Ani

Don't tell my wife, but I am in love with another woman. Ever since I saw Ani DiFranco at the Progressive anniversary event at the Orpheum I have been hooked by her sounds and searching online for her work.

Two great videos - good sound quality too.

One

Two

Reality Show = Family Education ??

I have long thought that there is a lack of good information available to parents on how to raise kids. Since we have smaller families, take long breaks between college and having kids and don't live near family and friends who have kids may of us felt a bit unprepared for the job. I am not talking about parenting books written by some child psychologist or lessons on how to change a diaper. There is next to nothing useful that you'd find on TV that could help (Super Nanny is somewhat useful), most shows don't even show families with kids and Rachel from Friends taught me nothing about taking care of a baby.

Being a parent with your partner is hard enough I can't imaging how hard it would be being a divorced parent. How do you communicate, share responsibilities, who sleeps where, what do you tell the kid? I am sure there are lots of books but I would guess that divorced parents feel a lack of models and support as they figure this out. Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist agrees in her post How to divorce new-millennium style (and I love Kate Gosselin) and turns to her blog readers and John and Kate for help figuring out how to best raise a family when you get divorced. Part of her point is that now that John and Kate are separating, the viewers can learn by watching how they work out these things on TV. I am not sure reality TV is the best way to learn to be a parent but it is better than nothing.

World Leader Handshake?

What is Lula da Silva donig to Obama here?

Sippy Cups at the Symphony

So Wisconsin folks can have their beer and Beethoven as long as they drink it in a sippy cup.

Buttery Jacko?!

Is it an honor to have your image crafted out of butter and displayed at the State Fair?

The people of Iowa are considering whether to create a statue out of butter of Michael Jackson. I say that Iowa citizens should vote yes, not because MJ is a great American but because it would be pretty awesome to see a MJ butter statute, that would be too funny and it would actually bring in a lot of visitors and media attention ($) to the great state of Iowa.

It doesn't have to be a deep cultural statement to do this, he was famous, he died, we made a statue of him out of butter.

I think the WI state fair only has a butter cow but I like the whole unique stautue idea.

NY Times Removes Airbrushed Photos of Half Built Homes

I am a fan of the urban planning website Planetizen. I like the mix of articles about building projects, transportation issues, sprawl, and land use issues from around the world. This one caught my eye:

This slide show from The New York Times Magazine takes a look at the abandoned and stalled buildings form around the country that epitomize the bust of the building market.

Photographer Edgar Martins toured throughout the U.S. to document these sites, which range from the typical Sun Belt subdivision to Connecticut McMansions to a mega casino project in Las Vegas.

"The abandoned or stalled developments -- and Matins's photos of them -- can be seen as signs of the hubris (and occasional criminality) that typified the boom and the economic and human damage that remained in its wake."

I am not sure if this was an online only thing or if these photos were in the real NY Times Magazine. So I went to the link and there is no slide show- only this "Editors' Note: July 7, 2009 The pictures in this feature were removed after questions were raised about whether they had been digitally altered." This seems odd and a big deal for the NY Times to publish photos and then take them down. Here is a news story about this but it doesn't say much more.

There is a meta filter page where people discuss whether the photos were altered. The folks there carefully examined the photos and noted that some of the photos looked like the artist split photos and created a mirror image side-by-side to create a certain symmetrical look of a building. Of the 49 on the website, I can only see a couple where this would have even been possible.

This is not a photo of some complicated current news story like a violent protest or murder scene where it is somewhat like a false story to have an altered photo.

You CAN still see the photos at the photographer's website. Go to Photography and then Ruins of the Gilded Age and then go to the PHOTOS button and you can see 49 excellent photos.

They are great and almost all of these do not seem altered in any signficant way and even the 2 or 3 that may be do not make the story any less honest. These are art photographs so if he took one of a home and did some changes to it to make it look a bit more foggy or grey, took out a truck, that is fine. It is one artists impression of a problem. Even the ones with the possible mirror change, maybe the other side had some flaw that looked odd and the mirror one probably looks very similar to the original. He took real photos and selected them and presented them in a way to make an impression. It is not like he took a photo of a nice home and put fake bullet holes in the side. It is like a painter who walks around looking and homeless people and then paints a picture of a homeless person that is not exactly like the people he saw and then it is put on the cover of a magazine.

There is not a fine line between real photos and altered photos. All published photos go through some touch ups or changes.

Who would even care about this? Initially I thought that a developer or owner of one of these projects did not want his project to look empty or abandoned and asked the NY Times to take them down but now it seems that some photos sleuths caught a couple of fishy looking photos and the NY Times editors found out about it.

Bad call, these are great photos which capture an important piece of our economic meltdown around the country. NY Times, put them back up.

EXTRA: this PDN webpage has more evidence of the altercations of a few photos. While I guess they caught him I still don't think it really matters. Most of these altercations seem so minor they do not detract from the subject. Two of these photoshop changes are pieces of the foreground or background or blurry areas that are not really part of what you are looking at. Maybe there was something that looked funny and detracted from the subject that they wanted removed.

$779 Million!

Incentives offered by Michigan to get GM plant.

The Real Madison - On Canvas

I was at the downtown Ancora today doing a bit of work and saw the work of Jeff Stern on display. I would not say that Mr. Stern is the absolute best artist I have ever seen or the next Van Gogh but he is a very talented artist.

What I really like more than the quality of the artistic skill is the diverse range of scenes that perfectly capture the Madison and Dane County experience for me. These are not idyllic farm fields or post card skyline shots but real honest interesting scenes from around town.

They are almost like photographs in their level of detail which is very cool. What I also like in these paintings is that they capture the mundane real details of our town. It reminds me of the movie Crumb about Robert Crumb where he talks about how he includes the power/ telephone lines and cracks in the sidewalk in his drawings. That makes them look more real than the typical pretty painting. Stern has a website with some great examples of his work. Some other super paintings are in the coffee shop that you should check out. There is a great one in Ancora of state street scene that just breaths Madison.

Forget the Mommy Wars, what about the war between parents and non parents

Judy Berman from Salon Broadsheet has noticed a bit of an online war going on which one side has made their point on a new website. Berman found STFU, Parents website. This site posts real Facebook status updates from parents about what their kids are up to and mocks them. As Berman points out these updates are often about gross kids bodly fluid things and many parents and non-parents would not choose to know this much about their friend's kids. I can see both sides of this, I find some of the parent's updates on their kids actions to be a bit boring or too much information but parenting is huge deal and can be very helpful and interesting to share this stuff with other parents. I also find the updates from the non-parents to be a bit irritating. I don't think there would be a STFU, Blacks or STFU, Gays but I can see parents wanting to set up a STFU, People w/o Kids.

Why is the Sun Belt so Fat?

One of those stories you read from time to time about which states have the most obese people. This one has the title "Mississippi's still fattest but Alabama closing in

Here are some of the big winners:

Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity, 32.5 percent, for the fifth year in a row.

Three additional states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, including Alabama, 31.2 percent; West Virginia, 31.1 percent; and Tennessee, 30.2 percent.

Colorado had the lowest rate of obese adults, at 18.9 percent, followed by Massachusetts, 21.2 percent; and Connecticut, 21.3 percent.

Mississippi also had the highest rate of overweight and obese children, at 44.4 percent. It's followed by Arkansas, 37.5 percent; and Georgia, 37.3 percent.

Following Alabama, Michigan ranks No. 2 with the most obese 55- to 64-year-olds, 36 percent. Colorado has the lowest rate, 21.8 percent.

I have two theories that may contribute to this.

The population of the Sun belt states grew a large amount since the advent of readily available affordable air conditioning. Much of this growth was standard sprawl suburban subdivisions. Unlike older parts of the country where there still large parts of our population what lives in cities or older suburbs, the south doesn't have as much of that and more of their population lives in suburbs built around cars in the 1960-1990s. The folks who live in these sprawling suburbs are less likely to walk or bike places because they can't get anywhere without getting in their cars. As a result, they get less physical activity. In addition, the communities in the south built fewer areas with bike trails, walking paths, parks, etc. that encourage fitness. By necessity, many of the people who live in older suburbs or large cities need to walk a fair amount each day which gives them a bit of activity.

The other related reason is that the Sun Belt is really really hot for a large amount of the year. Two weeks in August in a non air conditionsed dorm in Atlanta showed me I did not want to spend a summer in Georgia. For older folks (especially those who moved there from the north) it is too hot and humid to go outside and walk or do other physical stuff outside. Part of why Wisconsin is pretty fat is weather related too (too cold for much of year) and Colorado and California are not as fat is because the weather is fairly mild and people can get out and walk all year round. There are 5 good months where an overweight 60 year person in Huntsville would be too hot to take a walk or ride a bike outside.