Arizona's Own Espresso Pundit

Talk About a Disaster...

Law school cut down on my pleasure reading this year but I did manage to get through a dozen or so interesting books.  I think the Black Swan by Nassim Taleb will have the most lasting impact--although the works of Noam Chomsky were pretty interesting.

Taleb's previous book, Fooled by Randomness really affected my thinking and I was looking forward to the Black Swan.  I will have to admit that it's a really tough book; Taleb has a pretty annoying style and he spends a lot of time discussing obscure French philosphers who I've never heard of.  I found myself skipping large sections.  I think book will be like Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" which everyone bought but no one finished.

A "Black Swan" is Taleb's term for an event that is extremely rare, catastrophic and in retrospect appears obvious.  That last part is important because it fools us into thinking that Black Swans don't happen. 

Taleb's point is that Black Swans are responsible for most events.  The world is dominated by Black Swans, but we don't predict them or recognize them.  The book was written in 2007 and Taleb, for example, said that Wall Street and the banking system are vulnerable to collapse because the guys running them are sitting on huge risks that they don't understand and haven't accounted for. So they will go on happily making small but steady returns until they get wiped out.  Hmm, that sounds pretty smart now.

Taleb finds it frustrating that Government forecasters can completely miss the financial meltdown, but will tell you to three digits what's going to happen to Medicare in 2025. That's because they have no idea what the world is going to look like.  World War One was a Black Swan.  So was 9/11 and the Internet. 

Naturally the book made me think of Janet Napolitano. 

The Governor has just accepted the worst job in the United States Government.  If nothing happens, then she will go down in history as an obscure figure who is responsible for you having to take off your shoes at the airport.  Even if she manages to prevent a disaster, you will never hear about it.  The job has no up side.

But what about a Black Swan?  What if someone puts Anthrax in the Metro, a comet hits Houston, a 500 year flood wipes out a good chunk of the Midwest, or a ticked off engineer from Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan crosses the border from Canada with a nuclear bomb in the back of a VW Micro Bus?

What then?  Then Janet becomes Michael Brown after Katrina, Neville Chamberlain after Munich or Bill Buckner after the 1986 World Series. 

Her tenure at Homeland Security will either entail  year after year of career-ending obscurity, or sudden, total, unexpected and unmitigated disaster.

Her mistakes at Homeland Security could actually leave the country worse off than her mistakes as Governor have left the state...the only difference will be that she won't have a sycophantic media to bail her out. 

Black Swans are by definition extremely rare.  It may be a twenty years before the US is hit by an Oklahoma City Bombing, a Katrina or a 9/11.  But if there's anything I learned from Taleb's books it is that it's not a good idea to bet your life or your career that a Black Swan isn't going to happen on your watch.

Post Script:  One of the comments points out that some Black Swans are positive.  That's true and Taleb tries to position himself to take advantage of those unforeseen opportunities.  However, for purposes of this post, the DHS Director isn't in any position to benefit from positive Black Swans.  My point is the office only has downsides. 

No Bull

Sean Noble has started a blog called "Noble Thinking."  As you can tell from the title of this post, I would have named it something different.  But whatever the title, Sean's blog is a great example of how the Blogosphere works.  Sean worked on John Shadegg's original campaign in 1994 and then went on to be his Chief of Staff.  He took a sabbatical to work with Len Munsil's campaign and then took another sabbatical to work on the Marriage Initiative.  A mainstream reporter has no chance of competing with Sean's resume.  Could the Republic possibly afford someone who knows as much about Congress, local politics, or has as many connections as Sean Noble?  Of course, they could pay for someone of Sean's caliber but they wouldn't remain financial viable as a paper...oops too late.  

There's no money in blogging (there's no money in journalism either, the difference is that bloggers understand their situation) so an effective blog has to combine a solid resume with a passion that verges on obsession. I think Espresso pundit has been successful because I've been in the political arena for nearly 20 years and I'm like totally OCD.

While Sean has a huge advantage over local reporters, I have a huge advantage over him.  I don't think his Bishop will give him an espresso exemption, so he will be writing without that magic buzz that keeps me going post after post.  

Of course he can substitute energy drinks.  Hey, that's a great idea because it would allow him to use a better name.  Instead of "Noble Thinking" or "No Bull,"  he could call the blog "Red Bull."  Dude, that would be awesome.

Post Script.

There's no money in journalism?  Did I really say that?  Before the entire comment section erupts with howls from anonymous mid-level Republic staffers, let me steer you to an interesting column from Paul Mulshine, an opinion columnist at the Newark Star-ledger. 

Mr. Mulshine is clearly a journalism advocate and he has the traditional journalists' strong disdain for the blogger but he ends his lament with this sentence.

The old model for compensating journalists is as obsolete as the telegraph. If anyone out there in the blogosphere can tell me what the new model is, I will pronounce him the first genius I've ever encountered on the Internet.

Mulshine actually sees the new model he simply doesn't recognize it.  The new model is Sean Noble--highly qualified, well educated and superbly connected--donating a few hours a week to provide free content in his spare time.

Indeed, Paul Mulshine is the most endangered of the journalism subspecies--the opinion columnist.  Traditional journalists still have a niche because most bloggers aren't interested in sitting through city council meetings and legislative hearings.  But columnists just sit around an write 3 columns a week for a six figure salary.   Columnists compete head to head with the blogger.  Sean Noble will put out more content in a week than Paul Mulshine will and my guess is that Sean's content will be more interesting, more relevant and better written.  

Mulshine doesn't see a new economic model because there isn't one.  He's going to be replaced by a volunteer.  

Golly, no one could have predicted the mess we are in...

The Citizen's Mark Kimble has an interesting blog post on the state budget fiasco.  You will recall that in the final days of last legislative session, Democrats--with the help of a few Republican enablers--hijacked the state budget process and without so much as a single hearing passed a $10.8 billion budget that was out of balance the moment it was signed.   The budget was founded on accounting gimmicks like delaying school payments, illegal maneuvers like ordering the cities to pay the state $30 million and topped off with items that were intentionally cruel, like eliminating the funding for a voucher program that allowed severely disable children to attend the private school of their choice. 

Now that budget is an astonishing $1.2 billion out of balance.  With only six months left in the fiscal year, it will be nearly impossible to fix the mess.  

Kimble seems to think that the Governor was somehow misled by poor forecasts. 

Government budgets are only as good as government economic forecasts. And less than a year ago, the forecast for the Arizona economy was way, way off.

In January 2008, Gov. Janet Napolitano presented her proposal for the fiscal 2009 budget to the Legislature. That’s the budget for the year that is now almost half-over, running from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

In her budget message, Napolitano referred to “slow economic growth that we anticipate for much of 2008.”

Golly if only there had been someone who stood up early last year and pointed out that the Governor was making a huge mistake--someone to point out that her plan was foolish and the projections were wrong...

Who could that person be?  By Golly, that would be me.  Nearly a year ago--a full four months before the Governor forced her disastrous budget through the Legislature--I wrote a post called The Road to Bankruptcy 

There have been plenty of articles about Arizona's bleeding budget, but I'm going to be the first to use the "B" word.  Arizona is heading for bankruptcy.  We are not going to grow our way out of this problem.

Here's the most prescient part of the post.

But the easy choices have already been made; the gimmicks will soon be gone; the rainy day fund will soon be spent.  It's time for real leadership.  Instead, the Governor is saying "Nothing Down! No Payments until 2010."

Of course, she'll be gone in 2010 and we will be the ones paying off the credit cards.

The media's final defense of Napolitano "no one could have seen this coming" is going to fall on deaf ears.

 

Deja Vu

I don't mind reading articles from the "Cronkite News Service."  That's a fancy name for "articles written by the kids at the ASU Journalism School that the paper gets for free."  That's fine.  As the newspapers cut costs, they will increasingly rely on free content from students and bloggers.   I don't see any difference in the quality of the students' articles compared to those the regular reporters, so why not use the free stuff?

What does annoy me is when both the Tribune and the Republic use the same story.  I can understand both the Trib and Republic using the Associated Press to cover, say, the Iraq war, or a shooting in Kansas.  But this is just lazy.

Here's the Republic's version.

Bills impeding abortions could find advocate in Brewer

by Maria Konopken - Cronkite News Service

During the last legislative session, Rep. Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, sponsored a bill that, among other things, would have increased penalties for those who perform a type of late-term abortion sometimes characterized as "partial birth."

Here's the Trib's version.

Anti-abortion legislation likely to return soon
Cronkite News Service

During the last legislative session, Rep. Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, sponsored a bill that among other things would have increased penalties for those who perform a type of late-term abortion sometimes characterized as "partial birth."

Ironically, these articles come on the same day that the Republic published a long story about a reporter named Albert Sitter who died over the weekend.  Apparently Sitter was big back in the day when individual reporters mattered.  That hasn't been the case for nearly 20 years and now that generation is passing away. 

The Cronkite stories mark another milestone.  The reporter is not just a cog, he's a disposable cog.  The classic curmudgeon career reporters like Sitter who were dominant until the 1970s  were replaced by increasingly faceless but still well paid and well respected reporters in the 1980s and 1990s.

During those years, a reporter didn't START his career at the Republic.   He started at the Siera Vista Herald and then he moved to the Arizona Daily Star and then was hired at the Republic to cover the Avondale City Council and work in the mail room.  Those were the days when qualified applicants would camp all day--sometimes multiple days--in the Republic's lobby on the off chance they could score and entry level mailroom job and bypass the Harold or the Bee.   

Once he was in the door, he would hope that in 10 years, he could cover the capitol and work under John Kolbe, Keven Willey or Richard De Uriarte--where he would be regaled by stories of how great a Governor Bruce Babbitt was.

In the last decade,  senior reporters began to be laid off in favor of junior ones and now the junior ones are being replaced by kids who work free.  It's hard to compete with free, so expect to see more bylines containing the word "Cronkite." Pretty soon, we will see the Cronkite kids on the Friday night Journalists' Roundtable on Channel 8--talking about the state budget while texting their friends under the table.  

Post Script:

This type of obsolete profession story is common in history.  One of my favorite tellings is Jack London's classic short story "A Piece of Steak.   

Let's Face It.

I'm usually about 10 years behind the technology curve. For example,  my car only has a cassette player, and when I listen to books on tape, I prefer CDs, so I have a little blue Smurf CD player that I got from my daughter.  I guess the rest of the world has moved on to Ipods, but I'm happy.

I don't know if it's the 10th anniversary of Facebook or not, but my friends have been telling me to sign up and I finally did.  I have to admit that I don't have a clue, so I don't have a picture or a profile yet, but I'll work on that.  If you want to be my friend that would be very nice.  You can also make some suggestions about ways that I can make the site more functional. 

Well, I'm done with this post, so back to that Atari game I was playing...

Your Slip is Showing.

The Arizona Capitol Times has put together a summary of the year's top political stories, but their choice of headlines provides some insight about how they view this extraordinary year.

Governor ascends, GOP gains – Arizona still reeling from effects of Nov. 4.

Reeling?  To stagger as if being struck?   Golly, I'm not reeling.  I'm pretty happy.  I guess the local Democratic establishment is reeling.  People who were hoping that Napolitano would stay and the GOP would lose the House are reeling. 

I guess some journalists are reeling too. Not that they are biased or anything. 

The Politics of Hate.

The culture war is starting to escalate into a real war.  It seems to me that the far left side of the political spectrum is more--shall we say "animated"--than the far right.  I find it interesting that the left is also willing to overtly target Mormons.  Here's a disturbing example from Saturday's Wall St. Journal.

LOS ANGELES -- Soon after California's passage of a initiative banning same-sex marriage last month, dozens of gay activists descended on the El Coyote restaurant with signs and placards. They chanted "Shame on you," cussed at patrons and began a boycott of the cafe.

Marjorie Christoffersen at El Coyote Cafe, the target of a boycott over her support of California's Prop 8. The restaurants's crime: A daughter of the owner donated $100 to support Proposition 8, the antigay-marriage initiative approved by voters. Gay activists have refused to lift the boycott -- which restaurant managers say has slashed revenues by 30% -- even after some El Coyote employees raised $500 to help repeal the new ban.

The boycotters have demanded that the owner's daughter, El Coyote manager Marjorie Christoffersen, pony up $100 to help repeal Prop 8. She tearfully declined, citing her Mormon faith, during a raucous meeting with activists.

You'll Laugh. You'll Cry...and Cry and Cry.

I'm assuming that Espresso Pundit doesn't have many 12 year old fans, so I'm not too worried about spoilers, but if you take your kids to Marley and Me be warned that the last 20 minutes of the movie features the slow death of title dog.  My kids were not amused.  In fact, they are still mopey and crying. 

A Classic non sequitur

Talk about making stuff up. Check out the non sequitur in this lead paragraph from Friday's Republic. 

A national backlash against the federal government's multibillion-dollar rescue plan for the financial industry may be stirring Arizona residents' call for local accountability as cities face millions in budget cuts.

Really?  According to whom?  Is it surprising that residents would call for accountability in budget cuts, or does the reporter really think that people are saying "Dude, Bush and Pelosi bailed out AIG so by golly, I'm going to call Mayor Phil and tell him that the Mesquite Branch library better not close early on Fridays."

Give me a break.

So Much for "Meet and Confer"

AFSCME just sent this letter to state employees.

An open letter to Arizona State Employees on the state budget crisis
and union representation

State employees and the citizens of Arizona face the biggest financial and budget crisis of any state in America.  The American Federation of State County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has been an advocate of Arizona state employees for decades.  We have been standing up for public services and those who rely on those services, even when it wasn't politically popular.  Over this time period, we were the only organization advocating for state employees in the legislature.

Governor Janet Napolitano has issued an Executive Order establishing a process of "meet and confer" for state employees.  Her order provides for elections among state employees to select a labor union to consult with the Governor's representatives.

While we applaud Governor Napolitano's action, we are deeply disappointed that she and her executive team won't be around to implement any meaningful change.  On January 20, 2009, President-Elect Barack Obama will be sworn in and, shortly thereafter, Governor Napolitano will become the new Homeland Security Secretary.  While we certainly hope incoming Republican Governor Jan Brewer will re-issue a meet-and-confer Executive Order when she takes office, the Republican leadership has already gone on record opposing it and it's unlikely the intent of the order will ever be realized. 

It is apparent that the Governor's action will be extremely short in duration, will require a large investment from the State and the participating unions, and will distract from the larger goal of protecting state employees and public services during the current budget crisis. 

As a result, AFSCME has decided not to waste our members' resources and not to ask state employees to devote precious time to participate in a meaningless election process.  Instead, we will focus our resources on mounting a strong and effective campaign to seek fair solutions to the budget crisis that protect state employees.  We are asking state employees like you to join together in this fight to protect your jobs and your future.

From the men and women of AFSCME