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Monthly Archives: May 2014

The Big Story

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There is a rhythm to economic reporting. More than just the seasonal adjustment that makes up most of the fudge in the economic reports, each story has a progress on its way to becoming something suitable for the mainstream media. The biggest stories often take a full year, passing several well defined milestones.

This delay has to do with several factors.  Conventional wisdom seems to rule, which is to say that old news affects the narrative long after it is not exactly true. But the cycles themselves suggest that the real problem is that many reporters really don’t understand what markets and market movers are telling them.

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Oil Patch(work)

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On Monday, 12 May, the first comprehensive energy bill in seven years died in the US Senate. It was an amazing bill full of small energy saving provisions that had nearly universal, bipartisan backing. What killed it was an amendment that would attempt to force President Obama to make a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline – though how effective even that would be is far from clear.

This was a moment rich in irony because this pipeline has long stood in the way of a comprehensive energy policy. Now, it has killed the most simple and obvious conservation measures. Not long ago Barataria backed the continuous delay of this pipeline because better and more inclusive ideas seemed to be bubbling up the longer it was stalled. This piece is a continuation of that one.

There is no substitute for a real energy policy, something that every developed nation except the US already has. In place of that we have a patchwork of projects here and there and very little real control over the situation to protect the environment, conservation, and even basic safety.  That has to change.

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2nd Person

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You know the feeling.  There is work for you to do and life gets away.  You may enjoy this repeat from 2011.

You have seen it used many times, but it often passes by without notice. It’s entirely possible that you had an English teacher who said it should never be done. You may have never contemplated using the second person perspective, the most direct and directed form. But you have seen it used all over the internet as one of the most immediate and direct ways of speaking to someone.

You can use it as an accusation or from inside someone’s head. Through its many uses and distinct flavors, you will find that nothing suits the internet quite like second person.

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An Anxious Spring

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It was a long hard Winter. It’s not letting go too easily here in the heartland, with Spring coming in short fits just long enough to give us all hope. But the transition is as bright as the green carpet of grass that covers the park, as pervasive as the smell of rain in the air, and as loud as the excitement along West Seventh Street. Each moment finds its own pace.

My daughter Thryn will graduate from High School in less than a month. Her dreams of hitting the road and finding a life beyond childhood color everything in her attitude now. The dark senioritis that wants to laze the last few moments collapses into anxiety in unpredictable fits of realization. Soon enough it really will be all about her, the desires of every teen made starkly real.

For her doting Dad it’s time to let go. As a parent, I can’t be good at everything.

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Credit Where It’s Due

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Part of the problem with the news today is that nearly everything in the world is interconnected. Stories have a tendency to bleed into each other for a variety of reasons, such as their equal usefulness as political tools or because the actors are involved in many different things at once. A good conspiracy theorist can link two stories together in ways that they probably shouldn’t be.

This may be one of those moments. Caveat Lector, let the reader beware.

There is little doubt that the theft of credit cards from Target last Winter could be traced to Ukraine – and, in so doing, the network of organized crime we might call the “Russian Mafia”. It is more accurate to refer to them by their own name for themselves, Bratva (Ukrainian for “Brotherhood”) because they are an international syndicate based in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine and operating nearly everywhere.

An estimate of their take from credit card fraud puts into perspective the scale of the problem in Ukraine,  We can estimate the resources they have as well as the stake they are fighting for as they resist the introduction of order and the rule of law. It also points to the US role in Ukraine – which is to say without sending in troops.

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