Headline of Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed authored by Ahmad (The Grifter) Chalabi:
The Libyan Uprising: Lessons From Iraq
The main lesson from Iraq, of course, was: Don’t believe a goddamn word of what Ahmad Chalibi has to say.
Funny the Journal hasn’t learned that.
Two days ago, splendid reader Steve Stein asked for some statistics to back up this claim made on NPR by a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute (and noted by the hardworking staff).
Mr. E.J. McMAHON (Manhattan Institute): I think the research is pretty clear that total compensation in the public sector is greater than total compensation in the private sector.
So we sent an email to the good folks at the Institute.
Dear Sir or Madam:
I write the blog Campaign Outsider . . . Yesterday I posted an entry that referred to the Manhattan Institute’s Edmund McMahon and his comment on NPR that “I think the research is pretty clear that total compensation in the public sector is greater than total compensation in the private sector.”
One of my splendid readers then commented thusly:
“Do we get a link to McMahon’s ‘pretty clear’ research? Pretty please? (If not, such a claim is worse than worthless!)”
Can you help me out with this so I can reply to the commenter?
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
John R. Carroll
And sure enough, press officer (and roud BU alum) Kasia Zabawa sent this:
Dear Professor Carroll,
Here are two links to such research:
www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-5.pdf
http://blog.american.com/?p=27543
The first is by Chris Edwards of Cato and the other by Andrew Biggs of AEI (contain links or references to other research and the underlying numbers).
Warm regards,
Kasia (COM/CAS 2008)
Say thank you to Kasia, Steve.
First things first:
If you picked “amazing” for your drinking game, you were knee-walking the Red Carpet by 6:16.
Rating the Red Carpet Shows
√ TV Guide Channel: Chris Somebody, Harrison Somebody, and Tabitha the Tonsorial Tsarina from some cable reality show.
√ ABC: Robin Roberts, Maria Menounos, and Tim Gunn in The Bland and The Relentless.
√√ Hallmark Movie Channel: Jessica Somebody, Sam Somebody, and Ellen Somebody, who said about the Red Carpet fashions, “We haven’t seen anything heinous!” Except your dress, sweetheart. (Sorry, can’t locate image. But trust me, her dress is a corker.)
√√√ E! Channel: Ryan Seacrest, Guiliana Rancic, and Kelly Osbourne were surprisingly watchable. Hey – superficial is what they do.
The Actual Broadcast
Opening video:
Lame.
This is supposed to be the “young & hip” Oscarcast, but if any young people happened to stumble onto it, they were gone within ten minutes.
Best Line of the Night:
James Franco’s grandma saying, “I just saw Marky Mark.”
All downhill from there.
Kirk Douglas:
Enough, already.
Melissa Leo:
She keeps reaching new heights of obnoxity.
Adam Sorkin:
Insufferably self-absorbed, as usual.
David Seidler:
Now that’s how to accept an award.
Christian Bale:
A surprisingly gracious acceptance speech.
Halftime Verdict From The Missus:
Boring. Predictable. Not funny.
Live Action Short Film Guy:
Excellent.
Oprah:
Dress makes her look like she’s pixellated herself.
Billy Crystal:
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Billy Crystal, Billy Crystal.
James Franco:
A stiff.
Anne Hathaway:
Cute as a button. Not to mention seven different dresses. (I knew I should’ve taken the over.)
Randy (2-for-20) Newman:
Looks like Michael Caine now, sayeth the Missus.
Tom Hooper:
Best director, best story: Mom found “his next movie.”
Colin Firth:
Characteristically smart acceptance speech.
Over all:
Not a great night.
Sharp review in the Weekend Wall Street Journal about three new books on Harlem:
Everyone from Aaron Burr to Malcolm X has lived there, along with Louis Armstrong, James Baldwin, Frank Costello, Father Devine, W.E.B. DuBois, Duke Ellington, Ralph Ellison, Marcus Garvey, George Gershwin, Alexander Hamilton, Billie Holiday, Harry Houdini, Langston Hughes, Joe Louis, Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, Arthur Miller, Charlie Parker, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Paul Robeson, Bayard Rustin and Fats Waller.
They missed one.
Actually, two:
The Collyer Brothers.
The original Pack Rats, Homer and Langley Collyer, (eat your heart out, A&E’s Hoarders) lived and hoarded on Fifth Avenue near 128th Street.
Via the New York Press:
Though gloomy, the house had not been messy in 1938. By 1942, Langley had singlehandedly accumulated vast quantities of newspaper, cartons, tin cans and other refuse, transforming the mansion into a fortress. He apparently applied his engineer’s training to arrange packing boxes and cartons in interlocking tiers with concealed tunnels passing from one room or one floor to another. Langley alone was familiar with the maze. Anyone else would have to remove the entire barricade to pass. He also booby-trapped massive piles of newspapers and old luggage with trip wires.
One of those booby-traps trapped Langley as he tried to bring food to Homer. Trapped him eight feet away. Both died of starvation.
There was nothing left but the cleanup.
They found telephone directories, three revolvers, two rifles, a shotgun, ammunition, a bayonet and a saber, a half-dozen toy trains, toy tops, a toy airplane, 14 upright and grand pianos, cornets, bugles, an accordion, a trombone, a banjo; tin cans, chandeliers, tapestries, a portrait camera, enlarger, lenses and tripods, a bowling ball in a canvas bag, bicycles and bicycle lamps, a rolled-up 100-foot rug runner, a 9-foot-tall mahogany clock with a music box inside and pastel painted figures on the broad face; 13 ornate mantel clocks, including one contained in a metal bust of a girl whose ears and bodice dripped coins, 13 Oriental rugs, heavily ornate Victorian oil lamps and vases, white plaster portrait busts and picture frames. They found a static machine, an electrical device manufactured during the 1890s for the treatment of arthritis, rheumatism and other ailments. They found five violins, at least two dating from the 18th century, two organs and scores of 7-inch gramophone records dating from 1898, including “Round Her Neck She Wears a Yeller Ribbon for her Lover Who is Fur, Fur Away,” “Atta Baby” and “Nobody In Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine.” They found sheets in braille from Homer’s failed attempts to learn the system. And they found a certificate of merit for punctuality and good conduct awarded to Langley at Public School 69, 125 W. 54th St., for the week ending April 19, 1895.
These things merely salted the vast sea of junk and paper.
By April 3, according to the Herald Tribune, the searchers had removed 51 tons of waste. They had only reached two rooms on the first floor. By April 8, 19 days after the search began, The Sun reported 103 tons of debris removed. Then they found Langley’s body.
WSJ, take note.
. . . it’s just plain sad.
But that, apparently, is what’s happening in America these days.
From our Mangled Phrases desk:
In Saturday’s Boston Herald, Hillary Chabot reported that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is “under new fire from all sides . . . over his landmark Bay State health-care overhaul as potential 2012 Republican rivals and local Democrats [take] turns blasting the GOP presidential front-runner.”
Among the blasters is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Fox News Channel):
The new barrage comes on the heels of harsh words from former 2008 presidential rival Mike Huckabee, who told reporters this week that Romney should apologize for health-care reform.
“He’s got to figure out how he wants to deal with it. It’s the 800-pound elephant in the room for him,” Huckabee said.
Hey, Mike, pick one: Romney’s either “the elephant in the room” or “the 800-pound gorilla.” Zoologically, he can’t be both.
That’s just the latest in a flurry of botched clichés the hardworking staff has collected in the recent past. Other examples:
From a Daily Beast story (9/10/10):
If Rahm Emanuel runs for mayor of Chicago, could he be jumping out of the pot and into the fire?
From a Boston Herald Letter to the Editor (9/2/10):
Cardullo’s has done a good job at tipping over the golden goose.
From a Boston Herald television review (7/25/10):
The knight had shown up on his shiny horse.
From a Daily Beast piece (8/23/10):
A new trailer that hit the Internet last week proves it: [Joaquin Phoenix] who grew a beard, took up hip-hop, and mumbled through a Letterman appearance was pulling one over on the public.
From a Boston Herald obituary about Ted Koppel’s son Andrew, who was “visibly drunk” according to a neighbor when he died (6/2/10):
“I told him to sit him down, and he was flopped down in the chair. He kept flopping on my chair. I said, ‘Bring him to the room. Let him wear it off. Let him go into the room and lay down and wear it off.”
From Politico’s Playbook, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele describing his style (4/5/10):
My view of politics is much more grassroots-oriented. It’s not old-boy-network oriented. And so I tend to come at it a little bit stronger, a little bit more streetwise, if you will. That’s rubbed some feathers the wrong way.
From MSNBC’s First Read (9/27/08):
So this is a plea to President Bush, for the sake of America, please get your party in line. Get the House Republicans to be more constructive; get Sen. McCain to leave town and not throw fire on these flames.
From the Boston Globe Letters to the Editor (8/2/08):
Now the morons have stirred up the masses to say it’s time for Manny [Ramirez] to leave. It’s called biting your nose off to spite your face.
Sounds painful. Not to mention impossible.
Saturday’s Boston Globe reports that trendoid theater-district nightclub Cure Lounge has “agreed to apologize publicly, pay a $30,000 fine, and have its staff attend antidiscrimination training for closing the club on a Saturday night because a significant number of black patrons showed up.”
Which is always an alarming development in Boston, as opposed to real-world cities.
Back story:
The agreement was based on a complaint made by a group of black Harvard graduates who had organized an event at Cure Lounge as an after-party to the Harvard-Yale football game in November. At the time, one of the organizers said in an e-mail that the club was closed and attendees were asked to leave because, organizers were told by club staff, they had started to attract local “gang bangers,’’ a reference to gang members.
Collateral damage included the preternaturally tanned George Regan, head of Regan Communications:
Yesterday’s announcement also ensnared local publicist George Regan, who at the time represented the club and had said organizers feared a “public safety issue’’ after attendees failed to show their Harvard or Yale identification, which he said had initially been agreed upon by the event organizers.
“There were a lot of people in line known to police and police and security circles as bad people, OK?’’ Regan said at the time. “They probably couldn’t spell the word ‘Harvard.’ ’’
But here’s what Regan is boldly proclaiming now:
Regan said yesterday that he had no reason to apologize, and that his statements were based on information relayed to him by the club.
“I personally don’t happen to frequent the Cure Lounge,’’ he said. “The facts that were related to the media I was told by the owners, who happened to be there.”
Right. He was just following orders.
More grist for the salary mill, via Saturday’s New York Times:
In Battle Over State Payrolls, Data Show a Mixed Picture
The janitors who buff floors and empty wastebaskets for the State of California earn a median wage of a little over $31,000 a year, which is 45 percent more than janitors in the private sector earn there. Georgia’s janitors, by contrast, earn less than $21,000, about 6 percent below their private sector counterparts.
And in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker’s face-off with unions has thrust public sector compensation into the national spotlight, the state pays janitors a median wage of nearly $27,000, about the same as they would make in the private sector.
The key, according to the Times, is education:
The clearest pattern to emerge is an educational divide: workers without college degrees tend to do better on state payrolls, while workers with college degrees tend to do worse. That divide has grown more pronounced in recent decades. Since 1990, the median wage of state workers without college degrees has come to surpass that of workers in the private sector. During the same period, though, college-educated state workers have seen their median pay lag further behind their peers in the private sector.
Then again, the NYT’s conclusion is, who knows?
The Many Variables Make It Difficult to Answer A Question at the Heart of Budget Skirmishes
As Harry S Truman might say, give me a one-handed New York Times.
Or is that too simple-minded?
More slop from the debate over who makes better money: public sector or private sector workers.
(Previous hardworking staff notes here and here.)
From Dan Bobkoff’s piece on Friday’s All Things Considered:
[I]s it true that many government workers have a cushy gig? On one side, there are researchers like Jeffery Keefe of Rutgers University who says when you add up all the pay and retirement plans and other benefits, public sector workers are…
Mr. JEFFREY KEEFE (Rutgers University): For the most part paid at market or slightly below market.
BOBKOFF: Precisely 3.7 percent less by his calculation. But these are just averages because there are a lot of jobs in government that just dont exist in the private sector, like say, prison warden. So apples-to-apples comparisons arent easy.
And, people like E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute disagree with Keiths claim.
Mr. E.J. McMAHON (Manhattan Institute): I think the research is pretty clear that total compensation in the public sector is greater than total compensation in the private sector.
Argue on.
(Note to splendid reader Michael Pahre: We report, you deride.)
On Twitter, it’s jake to be fake.
Via Politico Playbook:
JIM VANDEHEI talks to @JohnSBerman for “Nightline” piece on fake Twitter accounts.@JimVandeHei has World Champion Green Bay Packers logo as his icon. @FakeJimVandeHei: “You’re my little banner headline #candyheartrejects.” Video http://abcn.ws/h5xmk2
Cut to Mediaite, which chronicles rightwingnut Michele Malkin’s dustup with @MayorEmanuel, another TwitFake account:
After A Fake Twitter Fight, Michelle Malkin Has A Real Fight To Prove She’s Not “Stupid”
When Rahm Emanuel won his campaign to be mayor of Chicago yesterday, many people were curious to hear the reaction of his former boss, President Obama. Many other people, though, were curious to hear the reaction from@MayorEmanuel, the foul-mouthed fake Twitter persona that’s become so popular that the real Emanuel offered a “$2,500 or $5,000 personal contribution” to charity for the writer’s identity. Sure enough, the Twitter feed delivered last night, entertaining many…including Michelle Malkin who ended up getting in a joking fight with the fake Emanuel. However, this morning, she’s ended up in a real fight trying to prove she knew it was a joke.
Representative sample:
It started when Malkin tweeted this:
The Fake Emanuel then responded with this, in character, tweet:
Malkin played along, responding with this:
And it accelerates from there.
Understandably, the hardworking staff is alarmed at the prospect of someone appropriating our identity.
So, George W. Bush-style, we’ve launched a preemptive strike and established @FakeCampaignOutsider to critique ourselves.
Ask for us by name.
The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the public/private sector compensation rumpus:
The Public Worker Gravy Train
Many government employees are paid up to 30% more than those in the private sector.
Leaders across the country are proposing restrictions on public employees’ pay and benefits in order to put their budgets on a more sustainable path. The political left’s counterattack is that government workers aren’t overpaid compared to those in the private economy. Who’s right?
Consider a study released last October by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, which concluded that Golden State public employees “are neither overpaid nor overcompensated.” The Economic Policy Institute has generated reports arguing that government workers are underpaid.
These studies are misleading. Public-private pay comparisons vary from state to state, but a full accounting shows clearly that large, union-dominated states tend to overpay their workers.
Your rebuttal goes here.
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