Author: Jason

Google Power Readers Let’s You See What Important People You Don’t Usually Follow Think You Should Read

Google Power Readers is an interesting tool from Google Reader that takes shared items from campaigns and selected journalists and puts them all in one site so you can see what these “power readers” are interested in.  I can’t help but think that this service is already delivered by the blogs of some of these folks or other outlets that do mass linking (Drudge Report and the like).  Still, worth a perusal from folks who enjoy getting a dose of politics.

Trani Stepping Down Next Year

VCU’s President Eugine Trani has announced he will be resigning effective July 1, 2009:

He had previously planned to step down in 2010, but will now leave the post July 1, 2009, and become a professor at the university.

VCU officials have not confirmed his plans, but he has scheduled an 11 a.m. news conference today to make a major announcement

His earlier-than-planned resignation as president comes as his administration is under fire for its handling of the Rodney Monroe degree scandal. Monroe, Richmond’s former police chief, was awarded an undergraduate degree from VCU last year after earning just six credit hours at the university, despite VCU’s required 30 credit hours.

Trani, 68, has been recuperating from a quintuple coronary artery bypass surgery he had last month.

VCU Rector Thomas G. Rosenthal said today that Trani had made the decision to retire early over the weekend. He said the announcement has nothing to do with recent controversies that have roiled VCU — “Zip, zero, zilch.”

“This was his decision,” Rosenthal said. “It is 100 percent health related.”

Trani has done a number of great things for VCU during his tenure. It’ll be interesting how much of his vision out lasts him.

Read Trani’s letter after the break.

Continue reading “Trani Stepping Down Next Year”

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The Barack Obama campaign has announced that it will announce his Vice President nominee via text and e-mail sometime between now and the Democratic Convention.  While some might be willing to dismiss this as a ploy, it’s actually quite shrewd.  Potential millions wanting to be in the know are going to voluntarily give the campaign their cell phone numbers and email addresses and, perhaps most importantly, zip codes.  That’s a big pool to turn to for future announcements, not just for Obama but the Democratic Party as a whole.

This is a very smart move to get some long term traction and resources, win or lose.

It Might Not Be The Dream Team, But…

Team USA beat China 101-70 in a good start to its Olympic games.  USA had some difficulty with three pointers, but that didn’t really seem to matter in the end.  Catchy line from SI’s online coverage:

China has more than a billion people, but there’s not an elite point guard among them. If they ever find one, the Chinese might begin to close the oceanic gap between them and the Americans.

#dontgo Upsets MoveOn

For those of you who haven’t heard, #dontgo has been making a bit of news among the rightosphere as it covers House Republican members who are still holding debates in Congress about energy bills despite Congress being in recess and Pelosi turning off the lights, mics, cameras and all the Democrats going home.

The movement didn’t make too much in the way of news Friday when it started or yesterday when it continued, but something must be working because MoveOn is preparing a protest against the movement and the right is trying to counter. So that’s leading some (Patrick Ruffini in particular) to declare that #dontgo is now an official movement and potential turning point for the right.

And maybe he’s right. The energy issue has changed the tone across the nation and instead of Republican’s being told by leadership to do whatever they feel is necessary to win, Democrats are now being told that it’s OK to back drilling if they need to. This issue and the movement around it is growing and could very well fuel a lot of Republican fire. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out.

UPDATE: Find out more about #dontgo at dontgo.us and dontgomovement.com

UPDATE 2: CNN picks up on dontgomovement.com.

Bloggers Win A Lot Of Lawsuits

In an article concerning insurance and blogging, Christopher Boggs tosses out an interesting bit of information concerning lawsuits against bloggers:

Nearly 77 percent of ALL civil cases were found in favor of the blogger or saw the charges dropped by the plaintiff. And 92 percent of blog-related suits making it to trial end in blogger triumph (additional information availble at Media Law Resource Center). Odds at trial are overwhelmingly in the blogger’s favor, but there is no guarantee that this propensity towards blogger victory will continue.

As Boggs notes, nearly all of these victories have been on the grounds of the First Amendment. But that will only hold up as long as the bloggers themselves are responsible:

First Amendment protection requires, among other standards, bloggers, like journalists, to practice and prove due diligence in the gathering and reporting of “factual” information. Bloggers must also prove that no actual malice was intended by statements or information ultimately found to be incorrect or untrue. Opinions, stated as opinion and not fact, published by bloggers are also potentially immune from charges of libel under the First Amendment since there is no such thing as a false opinion.

The article specifically looks at a SLAPP, a lawsuit that is meant not necessarily to win but to scare others out of the conversation.  A “don’t talk or we’ll sue you, too,” type thing.  There are anti-SLAPP statutes in 27 states.  Virginia is not one of them.

UPDATE: Things To Do Before I’m 30

Back on my birthday I posted a list of things I’d like to do before I’m 30:

  • Write another novel.
  • Record an album.
  • Go to the beach.
  • Catch a major league baseball game.
  • Visit Yankee Stadium (I’d have to do that this year anyway)
  • Graduate.
  • Get back in touch with old friends.
  • Learn to dance.

Two and a half down (half is the “old friends”, I’ve gotten back in touch with some but need to do so with more), many more to go.  I’m trying to think of other things to add but at this point I’m having enough trouble with this list, why should I add more?  Suggestions are certainly welcome, tho.

Measuring Worth: The “Real” Price Of Gasoline

From Measuring Worth, the “real” price of gasoline:

Gasoline cost 27 cents a gallon in 1949 compared to around $4.00 today.* How has the relative cost of buying gas changed over the last 59 years? Presented here are two tables computing the annual “real” cost using our five indicators, one in 2007 dollars, the current number used for real GDP, and the other in 1949 dollars. While the two tables show the same trends, they do give a different perspective.

Using the 2007 table and the CPI and the GDP deflator, we see that gasoline was quite expensive in 1980 and 1981 and the cheapest in 1998 and 1999. Today, the real price using these two measures is higher than the period at the beginning of the 1980s.

By looking at the share of the Consumer Bundle and GDP per capita, the story is a bit different. In 1981, a gallon of gas took as much out of what the average consumer spent as $4.00 does in 2007. And as a share of GDP per capita, gas was even more expensive in those earlier days with it at over $4.50 in 1980 and more expensive in the earlier years.

The other table tells the story in a different way. Let us look at relative cost to an unskilled worker to fill up using 1949 dollars. That year the 27 cents it cost for a gallon of gas, took a certain share of the worker’s wage. The interesting question is, has the cost as a share or percent of the worker’s wage increased or decreased over time? The table shows that for the wage rate and price of gasoline in other years, this cost has fallen. Since wages have increased faster than the price of gasoline, by 2007 an unskilled worker spends only two-thirds as much, as a percent of wage, for a gallon of gasoline than the 1949 worker. The table shows that the $2.85 a worker paid in 2007 would be comparable to only 20 cents (in 1949 prices “share” of the wage.

When we use the GDP per capita, the cost has fallen faster. Looking at the table shows that a gallon of gasoline costs around 11 cents a gallon (in 1949 prices) if measured as a “share” of the GDP per capita. This is because in 1949, 27 cents was .015% of per capita GDP, while in 2007, $2.85 was .006%.

Finally, comparing its cost as a share of GDP, we see that in 1949 prices, it is about 6 cents. This means that a gallon gasoline was a four and a half times larger share of output in 1949 than it is today.

* The nominal price of gasoline can be found at found at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/petro.html and http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_a.htm For the tables used here, I used the price of a gallon of leaded regular from 1949 to 1976, the average of the price of leaded regular and unleaded regular from 1977 to 1990 and the price of unleaded regular from 1991 to 2007.