Congress Shall make no law...

Highly illegal prayer was occurring in public schools as late as 1962. The founding fathers routinely violated separation of church and state. Religious content of George Washington's speeches did irreparable harm to the early republic.
Stephan Waldman issued all these remarkable untruths on Vermont Public Radio this morning. He is yet another radio pundit displaying his ignorance of US history. The Constitution actually says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there of." Nowhere does the Constitution call for "separation of church and state".
At Constitution signing time, those words were directed at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which actually had an established church, the Puritan church (later called Congregational, and now the United Church of Christ) . Established means the Puritan church at rights at law denied other churches and received Commonwealth funding which the other churches did not. Massachusetts had prevented the free exercise of religion by executing Quakers on Boston Common in the not too distant past. Those practices were to be outlawed for the new Federal government.
In recent times, left wingers, aided by unwise judges, have expanded the original meaning to include banning Christmas decorations on town squares, banning the Lord's Prayer during opening exercises in public schools, and banning the display of the ten commandments in courthouses. Stephan the well educated Waldman, speaks as if the First Amendment supported the modern interpretation (distortion) ever since the beginning of the republic.
George Washington was noted for never using the the names God, Jesus, or Christ in his speeches. He always used the phrase Divine Providence, which is as non sectarian as you can get, even today.
How did Vermont Public Radio put such a dunderhead on the air, on Sunday morning no less.

How Boeing lost the USAF tanker contract (AvWeek)

Monday morning quarterbacking from Boeing. "There was a difference between what the Air Force talked about publicly and the way we read the Request for Proposal ," said Boeing's President Jim Albaugh. Sounds like the Boeing guys didn't get out of the office and schmooze with the customer. Airbus offered the A330 which is a bigger airplane than the 767 that Boeing offered. The Air Force has said they selected the A300 for the bigger payload and longer range. Boeing could have offered the 777 which is a big as the A330, maybe bigger but didn't. They also could have offered both airplanes but didn't want to fund two bid teams, and feared that two teams would compete with each other. That last doesn't make sense, competition is how you get a superior product.
Then Boeing didn't bid the well proven in production version of the 767. Instead they proposed an "improved" aircraft composed of a 767-200 fuselage, overwing exits from the 767-300, structural beefup from the 767-300F freighter model, and cockpit, tail section and flaps from the 767-400 ER extended range model. Speaking as an old USAF flightline maintenance officer, I'd rather have the straight commercial version so I can get parts from regular civilian sources and maybe even get depot level maintenance done at civilian facilities, and use civilian owned flight simulators for crew training.
Boeing's Albaugh claimed their pricing was as good as Airbus ($35 billion) for the first 179 aircraft. Industry sources say Boeing "was unresponsive" to Air Force requests for parts prices for fear that their airline customers could drive harder bargains once they knew what Boeing paid for things like engines.
Boeing lost the enormous F35 Joint Strike Fighter job to Lockheed, and now the tanker contract to Airbus. They had better get the 787 into production real soon now

So How Much formadehyde is in FEMA trailers?

Lehrer's News Hour did a piece on formaldehyde in the FEMA trailers distributed after Katrina. It was a long piece, interviewed trailer occupants with health problems, lawyers, FEMA officials, and a consultant for the trailer makers. Not once in the entire piece did they tell us how much formaldehyde was found in the trailers. The level was "high" or "above limits" but never was a number for the actual measured amount given. To say nothing of how many trailers were measured. Nor was a government or industry standard given. Nor was the level measured in ordinary trailers sold to the public given. Lack of real numbers discredits the entire piece, if they really did the measurements, they ought to have written the results down and presented them. No numbers, no credibility.
Nor was the testing procedure documented. Were the measurements made with the windows open or closed? Instruments were calibrated how? Lab work was done by who? When was the lab certified last? Trailers were tested for what else besides formaldehyde? Cigarette smoke? gasoline vapors? Smog? Carbon monoxide? wood smoke? automobile exhaust?
Modern test equipment is so sensitive that it can detect a small level of anything nearly anywhere. I'm sure there is some level of formaldehyde from the plywood of which the trailers were constructed. For that matter I am sure there is a small level of formaldehyde from the plywood in my house. The question is, was the formaldehyde level high enough to be dangerous, not that it was high enough to be detected.
I expect the FEMA trailers were bought from ordinary trailer makers, who have made plenty of trailers before Katrina. I doubt that the Katrina trailers are any worse on formaldehyde than the trailers sold to the public. No formaldehyde measurements on publicly sold trailers were presented, but I'd bet they are about the same as the Katrina trailers.
The News Hour ought to be ashamed of presenting such a poorly documented and frankly biased piece on the air.

New rules to prevent another subprime crash

The Treasury Dept and the Federal Reserve bank issued a joint policy statement. Too bad the policy, as published in the Journal, is so vague and wimpy. They call for more regulation of mortgage lenders and brokers, but don't say what regulations were not enforced. They call for licensing of mortgage brokers, where as they ought to call for the total elimination of mortgage brokers. Brokers are middle men who take a cut, and con borrowers into signing bad mortgages. They call for ratings firms to rate ordinary bonds differently from "complex structured products". They should have eliminated the "complex structured products" because they are IOU's disguised as real bonds.
Issuers of IOUs (aka mortgage backed securities) would have to reveal if the mortgage borrowers had shopped around for a good credit rating. This is close to worthless. Of course the mortgage borrowers have attempted to get the best credit rating they can, 'cause it entitles them to a cheaper mortgage. And some credit raters are more generous than others, or are willing to take bribes for a good rating.
Treasury Secretary Paulson's closing quote. "We are going to be mindful when we impliment it to not create a burden. But we think it's very appropriate to lay out some of the causes and some of the steps that need to be taken... to minimize the likelihood of this happening again. The aim is to alter the rules and incentives that led to excesses that are now painfully evident--- years of lending and and investing at prices that didn't fully recognized the risks by institutions with inadequate capital cushions, the development of financial instruments so complex that even the most sophisticated didn't understand them, and a deterioration of lending standards. "

Let me rephrase Paulson's talk. "We will let you continue to make most of these shady deals. You need to charge more interest on loans, and you have to have a bigger rainy day fund to cover the shaky loans that go bad. The sophisticated investors didn't buy subprime mortgage bonds because they were so complex. The rubes were taken in and fleeced. And you issued too many mortgages to people with no income, no jobs and no assets ("ninja" borrowers).

Fox News covers Eliot Spitzer like a blanket

Fox is running continuous Spitzer news. We have a live camera feed of the front door of Spitzer's apartment house, pundits wondering whether the resignation will be written or delivered live, commiseration with Spitzer's wife and children, speculation about criminal charges. It never stops. Apparently nothing else is going to happen today. Enormous verbiage and TV time to tell us that Spitzer is resigning. Actually they only need to tell us once every hour, rather than once every minute.

Franconia NH Town meeting

By state law, town meeting is the second Tuesday of March. I went. It was a scene right out of De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". Citizens gathered in Town Hall, a modest frame building in a vaguely colonial style. Mostly dressed in bluejeans and winter boots. Ourside it was below freezing. There were 19 warrant articles to fund the town for the next year. We appropriated $29K for a new police cruiser, $126K to rebuild a fire truck, $70K to build a garage to get town equipment out of the weather, $71K to operate the town library, $269K to operate the town dump, excuse me, the transfer station. Dumps are politically incorrect. Even when they cost more than libraries.
Serious discussion of the town water system, improvements there to. The first article was $250K to put in water meters. After a number of probing questions from the audience, it developed that water meters are required by the Federal government, and Franconia was planning to apply for a federal grant of a few million to update the 1930 town water system. No meters, no grant. So, $250K blown on water meters. They had a guy from the State DES attempt to explain the need for meters, but he was unconvincing. Second article was $99K for a consulting engineering firm to draw up plans, price them, and do the grant applications. So, $350K expended in the hopes of winning a Federal grant of $3.5 million.

Air Force takes flack over Airbus tanker

Strategy page blog has a posting about the Airbus-Boeing competition. Boeing plans to contest the contract award. The Air Force is buying existing airliners, the Boeing 767 vs the Airbus A330. Both planes have been in production for years. Cost to buy, to operate, range, payload, and everything else is well known. There is no research and development money or risk, there is no logistics support, parts and service are widely available on the civilian market.
Airbus offered a larger plane. Boeing could have offered their larger 777 transport if they had been asked, or if they thought it was more appropriate to the mission. Or Boeing could have offered both aircraft and let the Air Force decide which size fits all.
Domestic content of the two planes is not all that different. The Airbus plane has American engines and a lot of American made parts in it. The Boeing plane has major subsections built over seas.
Air Force supplied reasons for the Airbus win boil down to the larger plane was more cost effective, could supply more fuel with fewer flights, which is pretty obvious. Air Force has not released the vital bid costs. Both aircraft are well proven, widely sold, commercially successful jet liners. Either would do a fine job as a tanker. Air Force should select the lower cost aircraft. So far, we don't know which plane was lower cost, the Air Force has not released the cost data.
Expect a long drawn out contest of the contract award, with plentiful fees for lawyers.