I hate to consider the possibility that I'm a squishy social con, but this kind of police raid seems a bit over the top. 

In the same way that William Tecumseh Sherman's views on urban renewal in Atlanta went just a bit beyond the pale. 

There is a standard legal test for government action: when enforcing a rule or law, the government is supposed to use the "least burdensome means." That sense of "least burdensome means" seems to have completely disappeared from policing--and been replaced by paramilitary "task force" squads that seem more appropriate for Latin American juntas than a society of free people. 

Was a 5:30 am paramilitary assault necessary? 

Or was the 5:30 am "raid" intended to (a) intimidate the subjects and their families, and (b) demonstrate to prospective jurors how dangerous the perps really were, and (c) justify to state and federal funding sources how important this task force really is, and why it needs continued funding?

Me 'n Fred don't see eye to eye on some stuff. Well, maybe a lot of stuff. But I'm with him (and, for that matter, Glenn Reynolds) on this.

The first song I played, on my first shift as an AM college radio DJ.

James--

Building Information Modeling (BIM) offers some tremendous opportunities. Unfortunately, it is premised on some beliefs that are not borne out in practice. And that difference between theory and practice cuts into the projected savings that BIM promises.

In theory, every trade working in every part of the job will build their particular aspect of the project to exact spec--in exactly the right place. Deep theory. 

(I just cackle when the "CSI"-type crime shows feature the resident nerd retrieving accurate 3D building plans of a downtown building...it just kills me. But I digress.)

In practice, sadly, that simply doesn't happen. The mechanical systems guy was working from DWG files exported from Revit because he doesn't have a valid license; he missed the revisions--the piping's in the ceiling. Whaddayagonnado? 

The bigger challenge for BIM is simply the dearth of new building construction. BIM makes sense in a from-the-ground-up project--BIM, modeled ex post facto on an existing job site, is an expensive and painful exercise. Particularly when the BIM devotees insist on modeling things like low-voltage electrical circuitry. 

BIM's really cool. The challenge is making it happen.

The "woman-owned" category is where that kind of thing is most common, but there is certainly a history of sham minority contractors. 

At its best, this kind of program helps get minorities into business for themselves--in businesses that are overwhelmingly dominated by white men, and that have very strong history in guild and apprenticeship business structures. 

At its worst, the program provides an opportunity for a scammer to game the system. Hopefully we'll figure out how to make it work for the people it should; and discourage the crooks from cheating.

Funny thing--

I'm in the midst of a big proposal, solicited by a Very Large State Agency, to develop and manage a contracting program working with contractors just like Doug. And just yesterday I clarified the language in the proposal about how we'll develop and implement programs to encourage participation by (industry term) "S/M/W-BE firms". If Doug were located on an Indian reservation in the opposite corner of the country, he might very well end up getting a mailing from me. 

Doug and I are white men. And if you looked at engineers and managers in the electrical construction business you'd see an extremely high percentage of white men. And an extremely high percentage of those white men are the sons of white men who worked in some aspect of this business before them. 

That HubZone designation gives Doug an incentive to find young men on that reservation to hire. And, hopefully, some of them might someday become contractors too. That's far, far, far better than condemning them to the life of government dependency that is all-too-common on a lot of reservations. 

And that's a good thing.

Lance hasn't commented yet, so I'll chime in on his behalf.

(Ahem)

"Someone has to strike a pose,
And bear the weight of well-tailored clothes,
Each species has a sex that fated,
To be highly celebrated,
And that is why the Lord created...Men!"

("The Creation of Men", from The Scarlet Pimpernel, words and music by Frank Wildhorn.) 

My son-in-law is African-American. 

His father took a job with Pratt & Whitney and traveled all over the world--as these things happen, he met and married a woman in South Africa. 

So my white-as-Liz-Warren son-in-law is African-American. And considerably more African-American than most, given that he has lived more than half of his life in Africa. (Most in South Africa, but also in Egypt.)

Off-hand, I'm aware of officially-designated "Chinatown" areas in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. I'd assume there's one in Los Angeles, as well as in many other cities. In each of those that I've visited there are street signs in Chinese, most commerce among the locals is conducted in Chinese, and a Caucasian's chance of getting hired by a local retailer is pretty close to zero.

So what? 

There have been densely-populated ethnic enclaves in the U.S. since a bunch of English immigrants landed on the shore of Massachusetts Bay and named their settlement "Plimouth." 

We have a term for densely-populated ethnic enclaves in American English: "ghetto." Nowadays it connotes a black or Hispanic neighborhood with a high rate of poverty--but the word is actually the Italian word for "village." It originally described the rundown neighborhoods where Italian immigrants congregated. 

Sure--you're describing a planned community for upper-income Chinese. It's not the same thing as the squalor of Hell's Kitchen. But every one of those kids will learn English, and grow to see themselves as Americans. 

That's a good thing.

I recommend that you all read the WSJ's analysis of this, including the video discussion of the WSJ's prior coverage of the issue, here:

J.P. Morgan Chase Flags $2 Billion Blunder

Key takeaway: while this is a big, scary-sounding number, this is significantly less than a quarter's profits for the bank, and a very small fraction of the bank's cash assets. 

Read the article, watch the video--you'll find both very informative. There's also a link from the article to the JPMC quarterly 10-Q form, which is where this trading position was reported.

There's a similar feeling to this among professional athletes, best described by Alex Rodriguez: "when you first get called up, you keep your head down, your mouth shut, and you hope and pray you can last for a week--maybe even two--before they figure out they called up the wrong guy named 'Rodriguez'." 

If I remember my eight weeks of French in 7th grade correctly, "Ricochetois" would describe the people, and the 's' would not be pronounced; and "Ricochetoise" is the language or dialect we would speak to each other--and the 's' would be pronounced like 'zzzz'. 

Or it could be a spread for a sandwich. Or a soup. A really rude, arrogant soup.

Hmph. We're only Rico-peeps at Easter time.

My nephew is a Baptist pastor in North Carolina. I'm startled by his Facebook posts--it appears the response of the losers in the Amendment One debate have gone completely over the top. 

I question the premise: marriage isn't a function with inputs and outputs. (Er, technically, that would be "husbandry.")

The premise of the gay "marriage" argument is that the institution of marriage is really no more than than a contract. That's completely incorrect--but it reveals the intent of the movement: they want to reduce marriage to just being a contract. 

It's far, far more than that. marriage is an institution that forms the basis for every known stable society throughout the course of recorded history. And--where it has been abandoned (e.g. Rome), the society has failed. 

Nothing cures rampant Islamism like a well-paying job. 

Yes--there are exceptions to the rule, including the Muslim doctors who tried to storm a British airport (and ended up setting themselves on fire). But it's harder to persuade a member of the faithful to become a suicide bomber if he has a job, a family, and a mortgage. It's the down-and-out-with-no-hope-for-the-future who embrace jihad. 

This is only just getting started. Remember EightMaps? That was a "mashup" of Google Maps and the list of donors who supported Proposition 8. It didn't just result in blacklisting--it resulted in at least physical assault of a San Francisco homeowner. 

It isn't just gay "marriage"--remember the Krauthammer Rule: conservatives think liberals are stupid; liberals think conservatives are evil. So spray-painting a car with a Bush bumper sticker is acceptable; but questioning gay "marriage" is "bashing." 

In the 2008 election the police in Bethlehem (Pa.) started encouraging Republicans to take down their yard signs--because "person or persons unknown" were taking them down...with shotguns.