What is the mania among conservatives for spending caps? They are a foolish approach to budgeting, because they restrict government’s ability to deal with what comes its way and forces future citizens to deal with priorities set by shortsighted leaders from some previous generation.
Coming back from 6-1 to tie the game might be enough for some Mets fans to say this team is different than what we’ve seen in recent years. But the faltering of the lineup in the ninth inning — thanks primarily to two ballplayers that should not be on this roster — is more likely to be this team’s hallmark.
Think about how the bottom of the ninth unfolded. With a shaky Leo Nunez pitching, Leo Nunez pitching for Florida, pinch-hitter Ruben Tejada, a 20-year-old shortstop, fouled out to lead the inning off before David Wright walked, putting the winning run on first.
That’s where things fell apart. Mike Jacobs worked a long at bat, but ultimately wasted an out with a pop up to second. Jason Bay came up and, after Wright stole second, was intentionally walked. That brought up Garry Matthews Jr., who grounded out to shortstop with the winning run at second.
The Marlins then scored in the top of the 10th and the Mets went meakly.
But the lack of a real cleanup hitter and Matthews’ rather nominal presence behind Bay in the lineup means that the Mets will have issues in these situations all year, unless they can find a competent six-hitter to keep pitchers honest.
We’re only two games in, but the starting pitching is not the only issue the Mets have. As long as the Mets have to send out players like Jacobs and Matthews, the team cannot be expected to truly contend.
As bad as today’s Circuit Court ruling looks — limiting the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to regulate internet service providers and opening up the possibility that Comcast and other providers can apply different rules to different content — there may be a way around it.
According to this post by Megan Tady from the Free Press “Save the Internet Coalition,” the FCC opened itself up to this ruling through its own mistakes and failures:The FCC has found itself in the ridiculous situation of attempting to regulate broadband without the authority to do so unless the agency takes strong and decisive action to “reclassify” the service under the Communications Act.Here’s the deal: under the Bush FCC, the agency decided to classify and treat broadband Internet service providers the same as any Internet applications company like Facebook or Lexis-Nexis, placing broadband providers outside of the legal framework that traditionally applied to the companies that offer two-way communications services.That’s the loophole that let Comcast wiggle out from under the agency’s thumb.
The FCC can change broadband back to a “communications service,” which is where it should have been in the first place. By reclassifying broadband, all of these questions about authority will fall away and the FCC can pick up where it left off – protecting the Internet for the public and bridging the digital divide.
The hope, she says, is that “this court decision will hopefully force the FCC to take action that will ultimately come back to haunt them.”
That’s the hope, anyway. Let’s see if Barack Obama’s FCC (pictured) is more willing to back American citizens than the Bush FCC.
When Barack Obama proposed drilling for oil and natural gas off the East Coast, he not only played co-dependent to our national oil addiction, he endorsed a dangerous rhetorical trope.
His speech at Andrews Air Force Base focused on “energy security” and “independence,” laudible-sounding goals that obscure the real dangers of our oil economy. It’s not just that we are reliant on unstable regimes for oil, which leaves us vulnerable economically to unrest. The issue goes much deeper.
It’s not “energy independence” we should be striving for, but independence from oil itself. Oil, as Peter Maass’ fine book Crude World shows, is a corrupting influence on the world, encouraging kleptocracies in most nations with significant reserves and distorting the vision of those that need it, like us. It incites violence, whether full-scale wars or internecine strife.
And it is killing the planet. Drilling, even with new technologies, is horribly intrusive and will become more so as the oil we seek becomes more difficult to draw from the ground. And burning oil as fuel fouls the air, rots the ozone layer, poisons us and the rest of the planet, with the residue of car exhausts ending up in our acquifers.
Were we suddenly to find enough oil in Wyoming, the issue of importing from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and other unsavory regimes would go away. We would have “energy independence” and “energy security” but we still would need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
The issue is one of public health and planetary health and we should be framing the debate this way.
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