The Week That Was

It's time once again to look back at some of the events of the past week.

Congress Passes War Bill

The House and Senate manage to pass their first legislation, funding for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill includes deadlines for pulling the troops out of Iraq, which guarantees its veto by the President. The bill also includes

• $500 million for wildfire emergencies
• $425 million for a rural schools and roads program
• $60 million to help Pacific Coast salmon fishermen
• $94 million to repair California levees
• $400 million in energy assistance for low-income families
• $3.5 billion in agricultural assistance (including drought relief for Midwest farmers and California citrus growers)

Meanwhile, while attempting to control how the war is being fought, Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to attend briefings by General David Petraeus.

Dow Jones Hits 13,000

Despite a slowdown in the housing market, higher than expected earnings by many companies propelled the Dow Jones Industrial Average to new records.

Rosie Leaves The View

After an agonizing year of having to listen to Rosie O'Donnell spout off about topics she knows nothing about, the American public got a reprieve when O'Donnell and ABC were unable to come to an agreement to keep her on the show.

Yahoo Announces Music Lyrics

Yahoo announced that it had signed a deal with GraceNote to provide music lyrics in conjunction with its Yahoo Music service. Early tests of the service show lyrics are available for very few songs and most searches come up empty.

Who Cares About Climate Change, We Found A Planet We Can Move To

European astronomers found a planet that they believe could sustain life. Orbiting a red dwarf star, the planet appears to have conditions that could support life and seems to be "Earth-like." Unfortunately, we won't be going there any time soon as it is 120 trillion miles away.

FCC vs Violence On Television

The FCC accepted its latest report on television violence and asked Congress to define excessive violence and give it the power to regulate it. Once again, a government agency has decided that it needs to babysit the American people.

The report (which you can download here) came from a congressional request to answer several questions, one of which was "What are the constitutional limits on the government's ability to restrict the broadcast of excessively violent programming when children are likely to be a significant or substantial part of the viewing audience? In particular, could television violence regulations, including possible time channeling requirements, be narrowly tailored to the governmental interests they are intended to serve?"

I'd like to call attention to the last part of that question, "the governmental interests they are intended to serve."

As I recall, laws aren't supposed to serve government interests, the media are not supposed to serve government interests, and certainly the people aren't supposed to serve government interests. The government is supposed to serve our interests. How is limiting what we are able to watch serving our interests? How is limiting our free speech in our interests?

What I find most interesting is that the FCC has completely failed to define "excessive violence," although they seem to like the idea of limiting when it is on television to when kids aren't around. I guess that means we won't have football games on Sunday afternoons anymore. Newscasts will have to wait until after prime time if they want to cover Iraq, Virginia Tech, or the recent prison riot.

I'm as concerned about the effects of violence on children as the next person. That's why I don't let my children watch "The Sopranos," even though I never miss an episode. But more government intrusion is not the answer. In fact, instead of giving the FCC more regulatory power, let's take some away.

The FCC was supposed to make sure that broadcasters served the public interest as part of their deal to use the public airwaves. This was because the airwaves were scarce. There were limits to them and the government had to regulate how they were used. Well guess what? There's no scarcity in television anymore. There's a lack of quality, but there's no scarcity. Also, broadcasters were held to government standards because they came into everyone homes for free. When was the last time you saw a pair of rabbit ears on someone's television set. I pay the satellite provider to bring me these stations. Without satellite or cable, I can get three stations on a good day. So if I'm paying for these stations, I don't want the government limiting them.

You want limits? Let the marketplace limit them. If people don't want a show because it's too violent, they won't watch it. In turn advertisers won't buy advertising time on it, and it will go off the air. That's the power of the people, and let's never forget that our country is supposed to be run by a government "of the people, by the people, for the people." At least according to President Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address.

Toyota Takes The Top Spot

Much ado is being made of Toyota outselling GM for the first time. While it wasn't unexpected, it is a blow to the American auto industry. GM supporters have yelled that it's marketing. They're also yelling that Americans need to buy American made cars because that money goes back into our economy. And neither one of those is true.

Toyota beat Detroit by building superior cars. Did they market that fact? Of course, but that doesn't make it a marketing ploy. They put much more money back into the company to make it efficient, to build quality. GM, Ford, and Chrysler need to follow suit. Management says the union contracts are killing them. The payouts for health care and pensions are crippling the companies. This is true, being unfettered from those problems is what allows Toyota to put more money back into the company. The upshot is that the cars are better.

Recently I found myself driving a 2007 Ford Taurus for a week. I hated every minute of it. The car was uncomfortable to sit in. It was unresponsive with a mushy feel to the accelerator and brake. It took a long time to accelerate and a long time to brake. The accelerator vibrated to the point that on a long drive it would make your foot numb. Driving on the highway sounded like I was sitting in a wind tunnel, and that with the windows closed and the radio on. The mileage was not horrible, but not what I'm used to getting.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was comparing a 2007 Ford Taurus with 11,000 miles on it to my usual car which is a 2000 Toyota Camry with 135,000 miles on it. The Camry has never needed more than routine maintenance and the only reason I wasn't driving it was that I had to wait for an insurance adjuster to examine it and repairs to be made after having something fall off a truck and blow out my tire. Even when the tire blew, I never lost control of the car and it ran wonderfully. I was also comparing it to a 1998 Ford Taurus, which I have had the opportunity to drive. While the 1998, was not as responsive as my Camry, it was a comfortable, pleasant ride. It was superior in every way to the 2007. So the quality of the Taurus has gotten worse over the past decade.

The 2007 Taurus was a rental, and of course subject probably not cared for properly by the people who drove it. But it still had less than 11,000 miles. For all intents and purposes it was a new car, and the driving experience was still miserable.

This is the basic problem. A car company cannot succeed when its cars are lousy. A company lives and dies by its products and Ford needs to come up with quality products. Then, they need to convince the public of that quality. One of the car companies (I forget which one) used to have the slogan "quality is job 1." They all need to remember that before they'll be able to recover.

As for money going into the American economy, 54% of the cars Toyota sells in America are built in America, and this number is growing. Welcome to the global economy.

Hi-tech meet Low-tech

NASA has released the first 3D pictures of the sun. To obtain them, two highly sophisticated spacecraft which are now in orbit around the sun at two different points, allowing 3D imagery to be taken from them. The vessels launched in October 2006 and are now returning the images to Earth. And with all this technology, you still need a piece of red plastic and a piece of green plastic over your eyes to view them.

Pull out your 1950s 3D glasses and check out the photos here.

A Bold Plan For New York

Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his vision for the future of New York. It's a bold vision meant to address air quality, water quality, congestion, overcrowding, and more. It involves upgrades to a infrastructure that has been in use since the 19th century. There is no question in my mind that it should be implemented, but will politics get in the way of this vision of the future?

For this plan to work, it needs the help of New York State. It needs help from the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Port Authority, which means input from Connecticut and New Jersey. It means short-term sacrifices for long-term viability. In today's political world, can such diverse groups agree on what needs to be done for the future. PlaNYC as it is called, will affect the entire region, and the entire region should not only back the plan, it should adopt parts of it for themselves.

Connecticut, for example, has fewer people in the entire state that New York City has. It could take the brownfields plan from PlaNYC and clean up its aging industrial sites. It could invest in a statewide system of mass transit. Cities within Connecticut could beef up their mass transit systems to connect to a statewide one, and implement pedestrian walks and bike paths. I don't mean hiking trails, Connecticut has plenty of those. I mean viable ways to get somewhere you want to go without relying on your car.

PlaNYC involves utilizing alternative energy sources. Connecticut and New Jersey both have open space where they could put wind farms, as does Long Island. Adopt solar panels on all new buildings. Each solar panel may not seem like much, but every bit helps.

While this sounds like another plan to stop climate change, it is much more than that. Forget climate change. Pretend it will never happen. This plan should still go forward and be adopted by the region and beyond. Why? Start with security. Every gallon of oil we buy puts more money into the hands of anti-American countries in the Middle East and Venezuela. It makes sense to halt the money that terrorists can get there hands on. Why else? Cleaner air and water means better health. Not in 50 years, now. Wouldn't it be nice to see health costs go down? Wouldn't it be nice to just feel better.

The plan can do even more than that, but only if everybody from the Governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the county leaders of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and the next two mayors of New York (whoever they may be) all agree to actually do something for a change.