Joe Sestak on PhillyClout: Toomey as a "Bag Man for the Ultra Rich."

He was quoting John McCain, approvingly. Great interview.



The Philadelphia Daily News is responsible for the blog PhillyCout. However having surfed over there, I found a sensational Philadelphia Inquirer story about a powerful governmental affairs attorney named John Estey who is in some hot water. Really adding to my workload.

Tuesday: Clear the Room

Everything else out of the way first.

1. You know how they say, "Where's the outrage?" Well, the Tribune-Review provides it, while the rest of the world plays catch-up:

Gov. Ed Rendell's acceptance of two no-bid, below-market leases of state land for natural gas drilling is yet another example of how his penchant for awarding contracts behind closed doors costs taxpayers dearly. (Trib, Edit Board)

If business like this cannot be competitively bid out, so that (if nothing else) we can be assured of getting the best value for sacrificing what were protected lands, what hope is there in this world for the rest of us? One has to wonder what both PA gubernatorial candidates think of this maneuver. It leaves something of the vulgar taste of the Marc Rich pardon; one hopes Rendell will further discuss the quickee land deal before he moves on to Transportation.

2. Oh, I get it, it's "Opposite Day" at the Trib. The headline reads, "Economy dampens turnout at Pittsburgh's Labor Day parade" and...

"There's a lot of unemployment right now," said Dan Gilman, 29, of Fox Chapel, who watched the parade pass on the Boulevard of the Allies with his wife and two young children. "If the economy were booming, everybody would be out here celebrating. But a lot of people are disenchanted." (Trib, Chris Togneri)

Wow, I'm reading this online obviously ... but if they pinned an A-1 above the fold story on this hook I'm howling. *-CLARIFICATION: Different Dan Gilman, 29.

3. It's go time. You hear?

"No question, it's going to be a tough year," said Michael Lamb, the Pittsburgh controller. "But there's eight weeks to go; today's the day when this race really starts." (P-G, James O'Toole)

Expectations recalibration on my mark ... mark.

"It's a scary year for Democrats," said state Rep. Nick Kotik, D-Robinson, as he strode toward Grant Street. "It's not just what's happening in Washington. [Gov. Ed] Rendell is an anchor in my district. That's going to hurt Onorato as well," he said, referring to the Mr. Corbett's rival, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato. (ibid)

There's a moment of opportunity here, clearly.

"The leadership of our party sometimes was more concerned with politics than policy," [Sestak] said, endorsing the widespread perception of an anti-incumbent mood among voters. (ibid)

The President (et al) is going to campaign for this guy. Makes sense. Sestak is sixish points down, it's a winnable enough seat for Democrats among some bad options, if Obama can help push him over the top (in PA of all places!) he could flip the post-election narrative no matter how bad it gets, at least as it relates to him. I imagine that will be sort of a Joe Biden relationship on the campaign trail but practicality works.

4. Whatever can be done to effectively help forestall the onslaught of widespread drilling and hydrofracturing in our general vicinity, that's super. All we have to do is hold out until the trickle of evidence arising from elsewhere grows to a torrent, and it becomes obvious that energy schmenergy, jobs schmobs, this is not the world's best idea. We don't want to become an exhibit ourselves.

The tests in Pavillion found that 17 of the 19 wells tested contained petroleum hydrocarbons as well as napthalene, phenols and benzene, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a report issued late on Tuesday. (Reuters, Jon Hurdle; h/t Fractracker)

This is the big thing that the industry has been maintaining can't possibly be happening. Everyone has been manipulated by a fringe avant-garde radical filmmaker, has been the idea. The goal posts will have to be moved accordingly.

4b. The Great Briemholio: Equitable Gas is angering his bunghole!

5. Here is supposed rendering of the Penguins' known short-term plans for the lower hill area, as provided by Reuse the Igloo!


I can't personally vouch for the accuracy of the "Yes or no, all surface parking through 2015?" question, I almost have to imagine it's in dispute. But I like this photograph for several reasons. First of all it really gives a sense of the canvas being worked upon, and how much land is developable with and without the arena, allowing for thoroughfares in both cases. Second, one has to wonder -- if this picture manifests, how much will it cool off the Downtown parking market? Do the lease bidders know about this? Finally, it reminds me of something Carl Redwood offered a while back-- he thought it appropriate that the community receive a tiny taste of parking revenue on this trapezoid. "At least they're bidding out the garages," he pointed out, so the city gets something in return. "They're just giving this one to the Penguins."

6. This just needs to be added:

As of Sunday, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl hadn't updated his personal Twitter account since Thanksgiving, and a reporter's request to be his friend on Facebook has been awaiting confirmation for months. (Trib, Adam Brandolph)

I'd have to ask that reporter: well? Are you his friend? If not, you're still welcome to like him.

LABOR DAY FEATURE FILM: "Dirty Hands" [expdanded]

Battlestar Galactica S3 EP16

"The Organized Labor Episode"

Full program: HERE.

(Sorry, couple of pop-ups.)

Crowning moment of awesome only, here.

##

In this episode of Battlestar Galactica, Deck Chief Galen Tyrol calls a general strike among civilian military-support workers which service the titular Battlestar -- that being the only military protection for the ragtag fleet of civilian spaceships which compromise the sum total of human life remaining in the universe (our species is being hunted to extinction by psychotic robots).

The stakes aren't usually this high, in real life labor disputes.

In the sorts of labor stoppages we actually contemplate, there might be angry parents of schoolchildren whose education and routines have been interrupted, citizens who can't use public transportation to get to work and to their doctors, factories no long producing metals, manufactured goods and fossil fuels. Clearly there are still consequences, to say the very least. Best to avoid unleashing strike power if it's not absolutely necessary.

Chief Tyrol and his cohort act up on behalf of workers on the tillium processing ship -- "tillium" being the fuel for all spaceships. Again, a big deal. His grievances however were those that are terribly common in real life: dangerous working conditions, long hours, lack of time off and lack of functional grievance procedures of any kind. It was the exploitation of child labor, in the end, that sent everybody over the edge.

Management, in response -- in the form of Admiral William Adama of the Colonial Fleet -- had Galen Tyrol arrested for mutiny. Jailed, he was then threatened with the prospect of his 'ringleaders' (including his family) being executed if the strike wasn't called off. Tyrol gave up entirely, calling off what had by then become a limited general strike against the military. Gave it up like that.

Because this is television, Tyrol was immediately rewarded for his ardent sincerity and practicality by winning a good-faith bargaining session with President Laura Rosylin of the Twelve Colonies -- so the episode can deliver some lovely Aesops. But in real life -- in a trend that has become more pronounced since probably Homestead -- Labor seems generally content with using its 'soft power' rather than the 'hard power' of a work stoppage.

Soft power means: threatening to strike, making a case to the general public, picketing a few times, lawyering and lobbying, and rejecting a few contract offers. Brinkmanship. But that's all we've been seeing. And NEVER do you see sympathy strikes, strikes of solidarity, franchise-wide strikes ... these are just observations. Am I wrong? If I'm not wrong, it seems everyone is fundamentally content with their jobs and with the social contract. Or else organized labor is just that weak and diffuse.

Another thought. One issue that tended to emerge during Tyrol - Rosylin negotiations was social mobility. In real life, social mobility isn't a labor issue at all. "Social mobility", or at least the idea of it, is something actually that works very strongly in favor of management. "If life is that bad as a janitor, be something better than a janitor! Don't insist on health care, cost-of-living raises, time off and maternity leave!" If President Rosylin could have said that with a passably straight face in her situation, you get the idea Tyrol's movement never would have gotten off the ground, save perhaps for a few well-organized bargaining units looking out for themselves.

In Praise of "Short" Attention Spans

Yet another piece about Nicholas Carr's The Shallows appears today, although this one is markedly less pretentious than most:

I've long suspected our brains were undergoing rapid evolutionary changes because of the Internet. I bought "The Shallows" and was quite surprised to find it wasn't the predictable diatribe against technology I expected, but a fairly nuanced, logical and deeply insightful exploration of brain plasticity, the cultural assumptions and practices embedded in reading a book, and how various means of acquiring information have shaped human intelligence. (P-G, Tony Norman)

The column doubles as an innovative, narrative-based way to write ye olde "List of Books I Recommend" piece, so good job there, Tony.

But here's the bit that doesn't sit well with most of the hand-wringing out there: fine, the brain is plastic. That means it easily changes how it works depending on what it tends to work with, and the omnipresence of an infinite, easy-manipulated Internet seems to be shortening (and otherwise playing with) our attention spans. Yet "plasticity" is only another way of saying "highly adaptive" -- which means that if our habits of attention are changing, then that must be a good thing, either A) in itself or B) in that the sacrifice must be somehow worthwhile given something else our biology has determined is more valuable.

"Evolutionary changes", right? Maybe we're just losing our flippers and tails.

My dad crystallized many of these thoughts for me after the last Shallows-inspired piece (or the last one?) -- even though he was actually referencing other stuff which appeared on the editorial page.

"90% of what you read anymore, you know exactly what they're going to say after the first paragraph!" Dad complained. "No matter what they're talking about, this guy's gonna say Obama's awful, everything's his fault, we should lower taxes, screw the poor -- and then this lady's gonna blame everything everything on the Republicans, and say the exact opposite."

"Not that I disagree with her," he was quick to add, "but it's the same thing over and over!" He has similar complaints, more frequently, concerning television news shows.

If something is "the same thing over and over" -- so highly identifiable and predictable -- why would our brains tolerate a long, forced march, which so rarely surprises us pleasantly at its end, thereby confirming our accurate initial determination? It's not like we have only so many words to read anymore, and we'd better eat what's on our plate.

We're all becoming Simon Cowells of content, and for good reason. I'm grateful to my creator that I'm developing a well-attuned Boring, Unoriginal or Previously Digested Alarm, as well as an itchy mouse-finger.

This goes way beyond partisan screeds. If you find something broken in a lead paragraph and don't see it addressed soon, or if you don't buy the first couple premises of any author's argument yet your objections are not engaged, what use is there to finishing these inapplicable pieces, again and again and again? Does that not take precious time away from the day's needle-in-a-haystack search for genuinely original, relevant, informative content?

Some commentators insist that the Internet makes us too likely to engage solely with perspectives with which we agree, while rejecting content with which we disagree -- that we're all a bunch of choir girls and boys in search of preachers within our own denominations. I don't know about that. I've been known to listen to or watch Glenn Beck with rabid fascination, and I can listen to Rush Limbaugh soliloquize for hours. Contrariwise, those liberal talking heads I feel guilty about not supporting bore the sense of duty right out of me. Maybe it's because I've read or at least thought already what they're saying, whereas the very best of the best conservatives come up with wholly original, captivating content. (When's the last time a liberal came up with something as powerfully clever as the Ground Zero Mosque?)

##

At any rate, before this blog post gets too long and repetitive, I want to get to Tony's original subject: books. Non-fiction books in particular. Long, repetitive non-fiction books. He seems to feel bad that his brain won't let him finish them anymore.

Let me take a quick look around my house:

The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman: Globalization, baby! Information technology is leveling the playing field. America can hardly be expected to maintain its huge lead, especially not over India and China. People on canoes in Africa have cell phones now, wow!

The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel P. Huntington: Yeah, and given globalization, religious and cultural or tribal differences, those barriers to understanding and fellowship, are going to be what cause problems rather than political and national schisms. Western, Latin American, African, Islamic teams et cetera. Pretty prescient for 1996.

Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell: The brain is excellent at processing complex and limited information quickly and efficiently. It's true what they say about first impressions. You are usually correct to trust them.

Right. All very strong thesis and valuable information. I feel smarter for knowing all of it.

Now tell me, did the authors really need over 300 pages apiece to get their points across? These non-fiction books all had something very simple to say, and then were padded out with copious examples, anecdotes, studies, straw-counterarguments, and, more than anything else, good old-fashioned repetition and fluff.

Maybe it's the publishing industry that insists that nothing can be communicated in less than 300 pages? Maybe it's impossible to charge $34.95 for a 25 page pamphlet that can be just as mind-blowing as a 300 page tome? Sure, arguments require evidence, but do most people need forty or fifty exhibits, arranged in the form of a memoir of how exactly our author came since college to arrive at this opinion?

Most of us, well, we Blink: "What are you telling us? Oh hey, that makes sense, only I wonder ... well gosh, you seem to have done your homework. Yeah, I pretty much believe this now.

"NEXT!"

Back to Tony. He proves my point at the end.

I've read hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages this summer, but I've only completed one book cover to cover, an excellent thriller by John Verdon called "Think of a Number." I read it in two or three sittings because I desperately needed closure. At the rate I'm going, I think my brain is officially broken. (ibid)

See that? A thriller, a mystery. Intellectual and enjoyable, the very point is taking the journey.

There's nothing wrong with your brain. It's better than ever.

Special Dedication going out to Ms. Mon

The inspiration: over at 2PJ's.



We're living in a cardboard world, I tells ya...

Corbett: Shale Formation May Vote with Feet

Or something. 2 Political Junkies posts a pretty funny Onorato press release (LINK). Money selection:

As part of their defense of Tom Corbett’s refusal to back a commonsense levy on the extraction of natural gas, his campaign argued that he opposed it because, the Associated Press reported, “a new tax might drive the industry out of Pennsylvania.”

That would be pretty impressive given that the natural gas deposits are located in Pennsylvania.

And:

And wouldn’t they have problems drilling from another state – since every other major gas-producing state has an allegedly industry-chasing extraction tax in place already?

It's all very amusing. I'm also curious already how Corbett is going to balance the budget without raising this tax or any taxes. He's bragging in his commercials like this is already an accomplished work, despite some extremely ominous math -- and it seems we're content to trust him on these future heroics. Personally I don't think it's enough to say, "I'll work it out with the Legislature." As part of this coming "work", where will he begin recommending to reduce the budget by like a fifth? State troopers? Education?

Speaking of bragging in commercials, Casablanca PA is challenging Corbett on his actual performance in muddling through the "Bonusgate" prosecutions now that his campaign has opened Bonusgate to scrutiny. My issue is: didn't the Post-Gazette actually start all this? Didn't Corbett state frankly at one point (little help?) that he was reacting to what could not be ignored in the Post-Gazette? And having taken the first steps, rather than come down methodically and simultaneously against both parties and the leadership of all four legislative caucuses -- which would have really mopped up or even ended this kind of corruption -- didn't he sort of blunder through the jungle one thin stringy vine to the next, ruffling as few important feathers as possible and only as criticism for not being fair and balanced reached a fever pitch? Check the timeline.