Bonds, Perjury and Politics

So baseball superstar Barry Bonds was indicted for perjury yesterday. For those that haven’t followed the story, Bonds has been suspected of taking steroids for some time. A couple of years ago, he was called before a Grand Jury to testify and said that he had never knowingly used performance enhancing drugs. So 18 months ago, the Feds started investigating Bonds for perjuring himself before a Grand Jury. Now whether or not Bonds took steroids isn’t a major concern of mine. I do think that the pervasiveness of performance enhancing drugs in sports is a dangerous thing and a bad example for the youth who look up to these athletes. But to a large extent, Barry Bonds is just a figurehead in the fight against steroids. And steroids aren’t really the point of this post.

I was listening to ESPN radio last night on the way home and of course they were discussing Bonds’ indictment. Former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent was on and was talking about the seriousness of perjury. He said if people come in to testify and lie under oath our entire justice system breaks down. The entire system is based on truthfulness and honesty. We cannot tolerate those who will lie and distort the results of justice. To me, the example of lying under oath is far worse than the example of taking steroids. It doesn’t matter what you’re lying about, whether it’s steroids or sex. Oh wait, that sounds familiar…

Lieberman on Iraq

Finally a Democrat telling the truth about Iraq. If there were more Democrats like Lieberman, we might could get along with them. (Emphasis Mine)

Over the past nine months, American forces have begun to achieve the kind of progress in Iraq that, until recently, few in Washington would have dared to imagine might be possible.

Working together with our increasingly capable Iraqi allies, U.S. troops under the command of General David Petraeus have routed al Qaeda in Iraq from its safe havens in Anbar province and Baghdad — delivering what could well prove to be the most significant defeat for Osama bin Laden's terrorist network since it was driven from Afghanistan in late 2001.

As al Qaeda has been beaten into retreat in Iraq, security conditions across the country have begun to improve. Iraqi civilian casualties are dramatically down. IED attacks have plummeted, while mortar and rocket attacks are at an unprecedented twenty-one month low. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in action has fallen for five
straight months and is now at the lowest level in nearly two years. And as a result, U.S. commanders on the ground have begun a drawdown in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq.

According to the BBC just this weekend: “All across Baghdad... streets are springing back to life. Shops and restaurants which closed down are back in business. People walk in crowded streets in the evening, when just a few months ago they would have been huddled behind locked doors in their homes. Everybody agrees that things are much better.”

Unfortunately, congressional opponents of the war have responded to the growing evidence of progress in Iraq not with gratitude or relief, but with unrelenting opposition to a policy that is now clearly working.

Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, anti-war advocates in Congress have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of retreat and defeat in Iraq — reluctant to acknowledge the reality of progress there.

Rather than supporting General Petraeus and our troops in the field, anti-war advocates in Congress are instead struggling to deny or disparage their achievements — and are now acting, once again, to hold hostage the funding our troops desperately need and to order a retreat by a date certain and regardless of what is happening on the ground.

It bears emphasizing that none of the progress we see today in Iraq would have happened, had these same anti-war activists prevailed in their earlier attempts this year to derail General Petraeus' strategy.

In fact, throughout the past nine months, anti-war advocates in Congress have confidently and repeatedly predicted that General Petraeus' strategy would fail, and that the war in Iraq was ‘lost.’

It is now clear they were wrong.

Rather than another ill-advised, misguided attempt to cut off the funding for our troops in the field, it is time for anti-war forces to admit that the surge is working and stop their futile legislative harassments.

It is deeply irresponsible for anti-war forces in Congress to hold hostage the funds that our men and women in uniform need to continue their successful efforts. Congress should support our troops in Iraq, not undermine their heroic achievements by imposing a formula for failure.

Plato's Guardians

With the presidential season in full swing, my mind has turned to politics of late. Personally, I’ve always had an interest in running for office and obviously I think I’d make a darn good Congressman or President. So I’ve pondered it some and lightly researched it. How could I, as a normal guy with a family, run for political office? Basically there are only four offices that I see (Governor, US Representative, US Senator and President) that would allow me to support my family without working another job. But you typically don’t start out in one of these offices. What job do you have where you can walk in to your boss and say, “Listen, I’m going to need the next 60-90 days off to go to Tallahassee for the next legislative session”? How do you live on the $30,000 salary that you make as a Florida State Congressman? This is to say nothing of all the time that must be spent “paying your dues” to the party before you could ever hope of getting the support necessary for a nomination. So just how’s a guy to make it?

I want to be very clear here. I got married young and had a family young. These are decisions I do not regret, though these decisions obviously “hamstrung” me in certain respects (as all decisions do, to some extent). In addition, great pursuits require great risk. A pursuit of public office should require a single-mindedness of purpose. My question is, are we evolving to being governed by a class not unlike the Guardians of Plato’s Republic? And with the rising cost of political campaigns, is this class, instead of consisting of those educated from birth to be the most effective rulers, composed of the well off and those who inherited wealth, allowing them to work for peanuts without having to worry about sustaining a family on $30,000 a year? It seems to me that most of our politicians are “out of touch” with “Average Americans”. Is this because you can’t be an “Average American” and get elected? To be sure, there's something to be said for a politician not being dependent on winning the next election to make their mortgage payment, like Mitt Romney was taught. But at what point does an "exclusive class" entered only by the persistent and those who desire it strong enough to make the necessary sacrifices, become an "exclusive class" dedicated only to those with enough money to buy their way in, to the exclusion of your "Average Americans"?

Isn't it Fairly Obvious?

This morning out of Detroit, we have this little gem...

NORTHVILLE TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The Detroit News and Free Press are reporting that a burned and beheaded body found by a utility crew is that of a convicted sex offender.

A single fingerprint from the victim's burned hand has allowed Michigan State Police to identify him as 26-year-old Daniel Gene-Vincent Sorensen.

The print reveals that Sorensen had been a registered sex offender in Illinois. Northville Township sewer and water department crews found the body at the end of a cul-de-sac about 20 miles northwest of Detroit about 9:30
a.m. Thursday.

Sorensen's head has not been found.

A cause of death has not been determined.

Maybe it's just me, but when the head is missing, I'm gonna go with that every time...

Selling Carbon Credits - Unethical?

So the capitalist in mean was wondering… As a "non-believer" in Global Warming, would it be unethical for me to sell carbon offset credits?

Here’s the numbers. According to www.Terrapass.com, my carbon footprint is approximately 80,835 lbs. Now according to www.carbonplanet.com approximately 5.33 trees are required to mitigate 1 metric tonne of Carbon. I, and my family, produce approximately 37 metric tonnes of Carbon per year. Using 6 trees per metric tonne, 222 trees would be required to totally mitigate my carbon footprint. Based on a planting rate of 600 trees per acre (seemed to be a low end of my brief internet search) it would take approximately 1/3 of an acre for mitigation.

Now Carbon Planet would charge me approximately $64.51/month to mitigate my carbon credit. TerraPass would charge $420 yearly. Taking the lower number, I could make roughly $1,200 per acre per year selling offsets. Now, if I had two-hundred acres, I would make $240,000 per year. Now, I couldn’t do this on my own. I’d need a Certified Arborist or Tree Dude of some sort. So there’s a salary of $80,000. Here’s this property on www.realtor.com. About the right size and $350,000. Monthly mortgage payment with a $15,000 downpayment and a 6% interest rate would be $2,008, putting annual debt service at $24,000. Now that leaves me with $136,000 to advertise, invest and live off of. Of course this doesn’t count other income such as hunting leases (the conservation easement would only be on the trees, not anything else, including wildlife), promotional merchandise (nothing looks better than your carbon neutral bumper sticker on the back of your Prius), etc. And as I get money and/or investors, I can obviously expand the acreage. Me and my Tree Dude can manage the forest to increase the carbon capacity, freeing up more credits. And I can invest in alternative fuel sources that would also reduce carbon impacts (this is what TerraPass does). This is the sweetest of all possibilities. Basically, you take other people’s money and invest it in companies that you hope will make a handsome profit for you. Sounds great, huh?

So, as you can see there’s good money to be made here. Is it unethical to separate suckers from their money? There’s nothing wrong with growing trees, right?