Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
A few years ago, Ichiro Suzuki said his goal was to play major league baseball until he was 50. Well, that’s one baseball goal Ichiro won’t attain. Yesterday, March 21, 2019, the 45-year-old told the Mariners that today’s game would be his last. It was a homecoming of sorts for Ichiro, as the Mariners started the season with a two-game set against the Oakland A’s in Tokyo, Japan. Although the Mariners swept the two games, Ichiro went hitless in both games but received a well-deserved standing ovation as he was removed from the second game in the bottom of the eighth. Thus ended one of the most unique careers of all time.
Ichiro, of course, came to the major leagues at age 27, joining the Seattle Mariners after playing nine years in Japan. He had owned the league in Japan winning batting titles in all seven seasons in which he had enough plate appearances to qualify for the honor. How he would do in the majors was an open question. He answered that question in a hurry winning a batting title, the Rookie of the Year and the MVP for a team that won 116 games in the regular season.
He would slap out 200 or more hits for the next decade including a major league record 262 hits in 2004 en route to his second batting crown (with a personal high of .372). He joined the 3,000-hit club in 2016 at the age of 42 with a stand-up triple, and he finishes his career with 3,089 hits good for 23rd all-time in the major leagues, 509 stolen bases (at an impressive 81% clip), a .311 career batting average, and ten All Star Games (here’s a link to his statistical record at Baseball-Reference). Ichiro was also no slacker with the glove, winning ten Gold Gloves as an outfielder (mostly in Right Field). He showed that defensive prowess and a cannon arm early on in his eighth major league game as he threw out Oakland speedster Terrence Long.
Yeah, he didn’t walk much nor did he have much power; but, with his bat, glove and legs he still helped his teams win a fair share of games, and he was fun as hell to watch especially in contrast to today’s increasingly boring game of home runs and strikeouts and strikeouts and strikeouts… Off the ballfield, Ichiro has always kept a low profile. Most likely the next time we’ll see him is 2025 when he should be elected into Baseball’s Hall of Fame as soon as he’s eligible. Until then;
There’s no real point to this post other than to briefly discuss and celebrate the career of one of the great character actors of all time — Ward Bond (1903-1960). First, I have to admit I don’t know much more about Bond’s life than that presented in his Wikipedia biography.
Let’s see … I did know that he’d played football at the University of Southern California along with John Wayne and that he and Wayne began their acting careers when they and other USC footballers were hired by director John Ford to appear in “Salute,” a 1929 movie about football. I also knew about the drinking and the conservative politics (among other things he was an early and proud member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals). I didn’t know about the B.S. degree in engineering nor did I know that he suffered from epilepsy.
Bond and Wayne, who would remain lifelong friends, had somewhat similar career paths although with widely divergent trajectories. Wayne, after a decade or so, would rise to the peaks of stardom, while Bond, after a decade or so, would establish himself as a solid, highly sought-after character actor. Bond appeared in over 200 movies in his career, including some of the best ever made. It’s likely most moviegoers of the time would not have recognized his name although they would have recognized him as soon as he appeared on screen. In any event, Bond made every movie he was in just a little bit better than it otherwise would’ve been.
Many of those 200-plus movie roles for Bond were quite small — a scene or so, a line or so. However, he also had his share of meaty roles and he made the most of them. He has a large role in John Ford’s The Searchers as Rev. Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton and he owns this scene:
He had a much smaller role in the 1934 Academy Award Best Picture winner It Happened One Night:
Did I mention that Bond was a member of what came to be called the John Ford Stock Company? He appeared in 22 Ford movies (John Wayne appeared in 24). Looking at the list, I’m surprised that Jane Darwell only has a seven next to her name. Seemed to me she was in many more than that.
OK, back to Bond. Let me show a couple more scenes featuring Mr. Bond in a John Ford picture. First up, from 3 Godfathers.
He played boxer John L. Sullivan in the Errol Flynn vehicle Gentleman Jim:
I was hoping to include a scene from The Wings of Eagles in which Bond plays fictional movie director John Dodge (a thinly veiled portrait of Bond’s movie benefactor and long-time tormentor Ford) but I couldn’t find a clip. This still from the movie will have to do. I’ll bet he had fun with this part!
Bond would become most famous to the American public by his starring role in the TV western “Wagon Train” from 1957 through his untimely death by heart attack in 1960 at age 57. Below, I’ve included an episode from the show’s first season featuring Charles Laughton. It lasts about 50 minutes.
Edwin Armstrong on the beach with his wife and his portable superheterodyne radio 1923
Yesterday, @richardeaston wrote a post Affirmative Action in Inventions in which he noted that in recent years a black female, Dr. Gladys West, has been given credit for inventions associated with GPS for which the credit belongs to others. I was going to comment on Richard’s post; but, my comment got too long and I think this post can stand on its own.
Unfortunately, I don’t think what Richard found is a one-off honest mistake. Rather, there appears to be a concerted effort to overstate the accomplishments of black Americans in some fields. This becomes apparent when searching various terms using the most popular Internet search engine: Google. For example, searching the term “American Inventors” gives the following result.
The top 20 American Inventors according to Google;
According to Google, the top 20 American inventors include seventeen African-Americans plus Thomas Edison (sixth place), Alexander Graham Bell (12th place) and Eli Whitney (20th place). The list is headed by Garrett Morgan whose most notable invention was a smoke hood. Lonnie Johnson (seventh on the list) is most noted as the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun. This is not meant to demean Mr. Johnson (who seems an impressive fellow based on his Wikipedia bio) or any of the other African-Americans on the list; but, the Super Soaker water gun is not as meaningful an invention as the electric telegraph, the airplane or thousands of other inventions by Americans. All of the people on the list are accomplished individuals who made positive contributions to the world. They just don’t belong on such a list.
The “American Inventors” list based on a Bing search is a little less biased.
The top twenty American inventors is headed by Thomas Edison, which is good. However, the remaining nineteen includes eleven African-Americans plus Benjamin Franklin (third), Alexander Graham Bell (fourth), Nikola Tesla (eighth), Eli Whitney (14th), Samuel Morse (16th), George Eastman (18th), Steve Jobs (19th), and Robert Fulton (20th).
This same sort of political correctness seems to occur in only some selected fields, and in all cases Google is the worst offender. Below is Google’s result for “American Mathematicians:”
The list of the top 20 American mathematicians includes thirteen African-Americans plus John Nash (eigth), Albert Einstein (11th), Solomon Lefschetz (12th), John von Neuman (13th), Claude Sherman (14th), John Milnor (15th) and Claude Reason (17th).
Searching “American Scientists” on Google yields the following list:
This list consists of eleven African-Americans plus Albert Einstein (fifth), Enrico Fermi (eigth), James Watson (12th), Thomas Edison (14th), Alexander Graham Bell (16th), Carl Sagan (17th), Hans Bethe (18th), Richard Feynman (19th) and Dian Fossey (20th).
The Google lists drop most (but not all) of the political correctness once they leave the United States. Here’s the Google list of British scientists:
The list is far from perfect but it does at least include many who do belong on such a list. The same can be said for other fields outside of STEM. Here are Google’s “American Economists” results:
Whatever one thinks of it, all of those on the list are or were serious economists (even Krugman was once a serious thinker before he became a partisan hack.)
And, here’s the Google results for “American Painters”;
I have no comment on the list other than to note the type of political correctness that infected the STEM lists is not present.
I don’t know exactly what to make of it. Somehow I think it has its origins in the ongoing campaign to turn K-12 education into political indoctrination a part of which is as I understand it that history books have quotas as to the amount of time that various groups (blacks, women and so forth) must be taught regardless of merit. Whatever the reason it does no favors to those who wish to learn history.
As I was writing this post I got to wondering what a list of the twenty or so most significant American inventors should look like. The list below is derived from Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment which was published 15 years ago. Murray’s book is an exploration and study of human achievement in the arts and sciences across civilizations from 800 B.C. to 1950 A.D. Based on Murray’s method this list works out as follows (I’ve included a very brief description of what each is most noted for);
Baseball great Frank Robinson passed away on Thursday at the age of 83.
Robinson was a star athlete at McClymonds High School in Oakland, California. And he was not the only star athlete at the school. One of his teammates on the basketball team was Bill Russell, while on the baseball diamond at McClymonds and at the local American Legion Post his teammates included Vada Pinson (a lifelong friend who would also be his teammate with Cincinnati) and Curt Flood. At McClymonds, he was coached by a local legend, George Powles, who was seen as a mentor by many young men.
After High School, he signed a contract to play professional baseball in the Cincinnati Reds organization. He made quick work of the minor leagues, joining the big club at age 20 in 1956. He hit the ground running, tying a record for most home runs hit by a rookie (38, since broken) en route to winning the Rookie of the Year award. He would continue as a star player for the Reds for the next decade, impressing with both his results and his hard-nosed style of play (no player slid into second base harder to break up a double play and he crowded the plate daring pitchers to throw inside resulting in his leading the league in hit by pitches seven times). He would win the NL Most Valuable Player award in 1961 as he led the Reds to the pennant with a .323, 37 HR, 124 RBI line (Cincinnati would lose the World Series to the Yankees). He probably had an even better season in 1962 (.342, 39 HR, 136 RBI and leading the league in slugging percentage for the third consecutive season).
After the 1965 season, Robinson was involved in one of the most famous (and most lopsided) trades in history. He was traded to the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for pitchers Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun and journeyman outfielder Dick Simpson. Reds owner Bill DeWitt justified the trade by asserting that Robinson was”…not a young 30.” Robinson would prove DeWitt wrong, leading the Orioles to the organization’s second ever AL pennant and first World Championship winning both the traditional triple crown (.316, 49 HR 122 RBI) and the slash-stat triple crown (.316/.410/.637). His performance earned him his second MVP award and he became the first, and still only, player to win an MVP in each league. He continued his stellar play for the Orioles for another five seasons, helping the club to three consecutive post-seasons from 1969-71 in which the O’s would claim three more AL pennants and another World Championship (1970 beating his former team — Cincinnati).
After 1971, he would be traded on an annual basis to any team looking for a big bat — moving to the Dodgers in 1972, the Angels in 1973 and the Indians in 1974. After the 1974 season, the Indians named him their player-manager for 1975. He thus became the first black manager in major league history. He would continue as a player-manager through the 1976 season after which he retired as a player at age 40. When he started his player-manager career in 1975, Robby looked to have a good chance of joining both the 3,000-hit club ( he was at 2,900) and the 600-homer club (he had 574). However, he concentrated on his managerial duties and put himself in the lineup in only 85 of the 324 games he managed in 1975-76. His career statistics are still impressive — 2,943 hits, 586 home runs, 5,373 total bases and so forth. For those so interested, here’s a link to his statistical record at Baseball-Reference. His playing career was capped by his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame as soon as he was eligible in 1982 entering the Hall with his longtime Right Field rival Hank Aaron.
Robinson managed for 16 seasons in the majors: three years with Indians (1975-77), four years with the Giants (1981-84), four years with Orioles (1988-91) and five years with the Expos/Nationals (2002-06). He won a Manager of the Year award in 1989 when the Orioles improved by 33 games from 54-107 to 85-75. When he was named manager of the Giants he also became the first black manager in the National League. His overall record as a manager was 1065-1176 and he never managed a team into the post-season. Robinson was a Baseball Lifer, first as a player, then as a manager, and between and after his managerial gigs in various capacities in the Commissioner’s Office and in the Orioles front office.
He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Barbara, and their two adult children.
Below is a brief video biography of Robby’s playing career presented by the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I suppose I need to start by explaining what I mean by “the Casablanca Effect”. It’s not my idea or term. A decade or so ago, I read an article by an author whose name I can’t recall who described what he termed “the Casablanca Effect” referencing the classic 1942 movie. He described how both he and his brother (separately) had heard and read for years how great the movie Casablanca was, and when he and his brother (separately) eventually saw the movie, it more than lived up to expectations. When they became aware of each other’s experience they gave it the Casablanca Effect moniker, something which comes highly recommended (a movie, a book, a restaurant, a location, anything really) and lives up to expectations.
Some years earlier, I’d had a similar experience (just 180 degrees out of phase) with a sibling – my sister. One year at Thanksgiving we decided to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Neither of us had ever seen the movie, but we’d both heard only good things about it. It had been nominated for several Academy Awards and had won a couple, its theme song was a well-deserved staple, film critics then and now all seemed to have nothing but good things to say about it, it was directed by Blake Edwards of Pink Panther fame, and it starred Audrey Hepburn. What could go wrong? However, when we watched the movie we both had the same thought: what a letdown! This movie not only doesn’t live up to the hype, it’s really just kind of a bad picture. The highlight of the movie is probably the opening sequence.
From there, the movie slides rapidly downhill. There’s no real plot to speak of. Holly Golightly (Ms. Hepburn’s character) is looking to marry a rich man when she becomes friends with Paul Varjak (played by George Peppard) a struggling writer who has just moved into her building. The main characters are neither very interesting nor much worth caring about either. She’s essentially a high-end prostitute who uses people, is unsympathetic and full of vapid thoughts, while Mr. Varjak is a gigolo, the kept man of an older married woman, although he has enough self-respect to dislike the situation. Even the minor characters add little of value to the story. The Buddy Ebsen character is just downright creepy and pathetic, while the Japanese landlord of their building (played over the top by Mickey Rooney with every possible negative stereotype of the Japanese) has not aged well to put it charitably. In fact, the Rooney character is about the only thing modern critics see fit to criticize the movie. But then again, his character existed for the sole purpose of comic relief in a movie labeled a romantic comedy and, while there are bits of romance in the story finding the comedy in the story is a more difficult task.
I mentioned Ms. Golightlys’ unsympathetic nature above. Let me illustrate my point by posting the final scene of the movie in which she kicks her cat out of the taxi in the middle of New York City. Tell me who would treat their own cat so poorly?
Well, I didn’t mean to write a movie review, something I’m not very adept at. In fact, I (and I’m sure you the reader as well) would much rather hear what @titustechera or @jameslileks have to say on the topic. The purpose was to explain the Casablanca Effect and its opposite and to ask the good members here at Ricochet if they’ve ever experienced “the Casablanca Effect” or its obverse, and if so feel free to tell us about it. Again, the Casablanca Effect can be about anything – a locale, a person, an event. – you name it.
Monday, November 5, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released a 414-page report (a 28-page report with 386 pages of appendices) regarding the Judiciary Committee’s investigations of various 11th-hour allegations against now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. It is the most comprehensive single document regarding the various allegations and the actual investigations undertaken and facts found by the Committee for each issue.
In addition to the Blasey-Ford allegations, the report includes the steps taken and all the information the Committee obtained regarding the Deborah Ramirez/Yale allegations, the Swetnick/Avenatti allegations, the Jane Doe allegations, and one or two others. For each and every one of these allegations, the Committee found “…no verifiable evidence to support…” the allegation. The report notes that criminal referrals to the Department of Justice have been made by the Committee regarding Swetnick/Avenatti and Jane Doe, and that the Committee is continuing to investigate others, such as Blasey-Ford’s long-time friend and former FBI agent Monica McLean, for possible criminal violations.
This issue is not over for the Left and should not be over for conservatives and Republicans. Thankfully, it appears that Chairman Grassley is continuing to investigate the Kavanaugh accusers in the hope that this sort of smear job will not be repeated. In addition, I hope that there are investigative reporters currently looking into Blasey-Ford to find the truth of who she is and why she attempted her smear of Justice Kavanaugh.
I’ve been fascinated by the St. Francis Dam failure since I first found out about it. For those who are unaware of or who’ve forgotten about it, the St Francis Dam failure, which occurred in 1928, was the greatest civil engineering failure in the United States in the 20th century (the Johnstown Flood killed many more people, but it took place in 1889), and except for the San Francisco Earthquake, caused more deaths than any other event in California history. Until recently, however, it was relatively hard to find much information on the topic. There was a book about the disaster by a local retired rancher, Charles Outland, who had been a high school senior in Santa Paula at the time the St Francis flood waters raged through town, which was published in the early 1960’s, but that was about it. Since then a couple more books have been published and an engineering professor who has extensively studied the failure and developed a detailed analysis thereof has written and given talks on the subject so that it’s now possible to flesh out the subject in great detail (I’ll provide links to the books at the end of this article; all other links will be in the text). The most interesting aspect of the story to me, however, is the way in which this event touches on and impacts so many other stories.
Los Angeles Aqueduct
William Mulholland.
The series of events that led to this tragedy started much earlier – 1900 or so would be as good a place as any to start this tale. It was around this time that the city fathers of Los Angeles and William Mulholland (1855-1935) the Belfast, Ireland-born, self-taught engineer and now superintendent of the newly formed Los Angeles Water Department realized that additional water sources would need to be found and developed if the rapidly growing city was to continue to grow and thrive. At this time, the sole source of water for the city was the Los Angeles River plus groundwater within the LA drainage basin.
Then as now, Los Angeles has a Mediterranean climate with warm, dry summers and mild winters. It averages 15” of precipitation (essentially all in the form of rain) with three quarters of that precipitation occurring in the four months from December through March. By 1905, the city was diverting all the surface flow of the Los Angeles River and had constructed underground galleries under the river to tap the sub-surface river flow in the summer months. In addition, groundwater wells were displaying steady subsidence.
Various potential water sources were investigated and it was eventually determined that the Owens River would be the best source for an adequate quantity of high quality water for the city. The story of the Owens River & Los Angeles Aqueduct is filled with much intrigue and certainly deserves its’s own post. However, I’ll just hit the basic project features here in order that we can concentrate on the story at hand.
The Owens RIver Los Angeles Aqueduct was a major engineering achievement at the time. It became a national story and it made a sort of folk hero out of Mulholland. The project was financed by the city via two bond issues – a $1.5 million bond for the purchase of land passed in 1905 and a $23 million bond for the construction costs passed in June 1907. The city performed all but a very small portion of the work with their own forces – starting construction in October of 1907 and completing the work in November 1913 on time and on budget. The aqueduct would transport the Owens River waters a total of 233 miles from its source at the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The aqueduct intake at the Owens River is at an elevation of 3814 feet and is approximately 15 miles north of Independence, the county seat of Inyo County. From there the water flows by gravity to its’ terminus at what was then called San Fernando Reservoir No 1 at elevation 1135 feet near the Newhall Pass. The major features of this original aqueduct were:
Power Waterways . . . 9.845 miles @ 1,000 cfs capacity
Reservoir . . . 7.87 miles
Note: cfs = cubic feet per second.
Los Angeles Aqueduct Dedication November 5, 1913 at the Cascades, Sylmar, CA.Los Angeles Aqueduct Plan and Profile.
St. Francis Dam Planning, Design, and Construction
Dam profile given to Governors Board. The red line indicates the as-installed dimensions.
Although the aqueduct was satisfactorily completed and delivering water to the city, work remained to complete and improve the aqueduct to fully meet the city’s long term needs. Several reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants had been planned all along but had been left out of the original aqueduct in order to keep initial costs down. In the years after 1913, the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works & Supply (I use the abbreviation BWWS for this from here forward) planned, designed and constructed these facilities. However, the continued dramatic population boom of Los Angeles exacerbated by an extended dry spell in the early 1920’s led Mulholland and the BWWS to seek additional storage facilities. Among these additional facilities would be the St Francis Dam & Reservoir. The chart below illustrates this ongoing population boom for Los Angeles.
YearPopulation
1880 . . . 11,183
1890 . . . 50,395
1900 . . . 102,479
1910 . . . 319,198
1920 . . . 576,673
1930 . . . 1,238,048
This population growth would play a role not just in the decision to build the St. Francis Dam, but also figure in the dam’s eventual failure. Although the BWWS had designed and built a number of dams by this time, all but one the previous dams had been embankment dams and none had been anywhere as big as the proposed St Francis Dam. The St. Francis Dam would be the second concrete gravity dam to be designed and built by the BWWS. The first was the Weid Canyon Dam (re-named Mulholland Dam in 1925) in the Hollywood Hills, which had been constructed between August 1923 and December 1924.
In order to improve reliability of the system, Mulholland wanted a large storage facility somewhere near the southern (or downstream) end of the aqueduct. This would provide additional security from a number of potential and real hazards to reliable water deliveries. First, since the aqueduct crosses the San Andreas Fault via the five- mile long Elizabeth Tunnel about 40 miles from the aqueduct terminus at San Fernando Reservoir No. 1, the reservoir needed to be downstream of the fault. Second, siting the reservoir near the downstream end would also allow for regular maintenance and minor repairs of the aqueduct with little or no disruption to water deliveries. Finally, the populace of the Owens Valley had never really forgiven the BWWS and the city of Los Angeles for their underhanded dealings in the purchase of land for the original aqueduct, and many in the valley viewed the city as something of a foreign power stealing a resource that rightfully belonged to them. These tensions were intensifying in the early 1920’s. When negotiations between the city and Owens Valley interests to share in the water from a planned new reservoir fell apart several acts of violence ensued. In the early morning hours of May 21, 1924, an aqueduct spillway gate near Lone Pine, CA was dynamited. Six months later, on November 16, 1924, sixty or so men led by one of the two Watterson brothers (who were the Owens Valley leaders of the resistance to the city of Los Angeles) overwhelmed a BWWS armed guard at the aqueduct control gates near the Alabama Hills (a location that was just starting to become a popular locale for Hollywood westerns), opened the gates to release water into the Owens River and occupied the headwork for the Los Angeles Aqueduct for several days.
Mulholland originally preferred Big Tujunga Canyon for the dam site; however, the local ranchers requested exorbitant fees for their properties (one owner requested $500,000 while the city was offering $12,000) Mulholland sited the dam for this reservoir at a gorge in the San Francisquito Canyon. The dam site would be located between two of the Bureau’s powerplants – about a mile and a half upstream from the Bureau’s San Fernando Power Plant No. 2 (placed in service in 1920) and about 5 miles downstream from San Fernando Power Plant No. 1 (placed in service in March 1917). In 1922 Mulholland had promised the commissioners of the city’s Board of Water Supply that the dam would be sized to store a year’s supply of water for the city of Los Angeles. This called for a reservoir capacity of 30,000 acre-feet. Due to the continuing population growth, it was decided to increase the reservoir capacity to 32,000 acre-feet in July 1924, shortly after construction had commenced, and then increased its’ capacity again to its’ ultimate capacity of 38,168 acre-feet in July 1925. This resulted in an addition to the dam height of 20 feet without increasing the base width of the dam.
Construction on the dam began in April 1924 and the first concrete was placed into this concrete gravity-arch dam in August 1924 and the dam would be completed in May 1926. As with the Los Angeles Aqueduct, construction was performed by the city using their own work forces. There are a number of details involving the planning, design and construction of the dam that merit discussion (especially so in light of its eventual collapse), but I think it best to leave those details to a bit later. Below is a tabulation of data for the completed dam.
Crest of Parapet . . . 1838.06 feet
Crest of Spillway Lip . . . 1835.00 feet
1st Outlet upstream elevation . . . 1799.00 feet
2nd Outlet upstream elevation . . . 1763.00 feet
3rd Outlet upstream elevation . . . 1727.00 feet
4th Outlet upstream elevation . . . 1691.00 feet
5th Outlet upstream elevation . . . 1658.26 feet
Size of each Outlet Pipe . . . 30 inches
Natural Grade . . . 1650.00 feet
Bottom of maximum section . . . 1630.00 feet
Length of main dam measured at centerline of dam crest . . . 700 feet
Length of wing dyke . . . 588 feet
Maximum thickness at base as per plans . . . 176 feet
Indicated maximum thickness from photos . . . 156 feet
Thickness at Dam Crest . . . 16 feet
Radius of arch of dam measured to the upstream face at the crest . . . 500 feet
Volume of Concrete in main dam . . . 130,446 cubic yards
Volume of Concrete in dyke . . . 3,826 cubic yards
Width of steps (offsets) on downstream face of dam . . . 5.5 feet at the base decreasing to 1.4 feet at the top
Spillway . . . 11 panels measuring 20 feet wide by 1.5 feet high clear inside dimensions
Reservoir Area . . . 600 acres
Reservoir Capacity . . . 38,168 acre feet
Distance from dam to head of reservoir . . . 2.8 miles
Capacity of canal that returned reservoir water to the Los Angeles Aqueduct below Powerhouse No. 2 . . . 1056 cfs
Cost . . . $1,250,000
St. Francis Dam under construction.
Dam Break!
Before getting any further along I should make a point regarding terminology. In water resources engineering, the directions left and right are always referenced based on the observer looking downstream. For the St Francis Dam, the left abutment is also the east abutment and the right abutment is also the west abutment. I wanted to make this clear because I’ll probably use these directions interchangeably from here on out.
A number of myths have developed surrounding the St Francis Dam, some of which are false and some of which require a more nuanced understanding of the events in question. One such myth is the idea that the dam failed upon initial filling. That is simply not so.
The BWWS diverted water from the aqueduct and began filling the reservoir in March 1926 and filled the reservoir to elevation 1780’. The reservoir was then lowered by 20 feet over the summer months this water being used to satisfy BWWS’s customers during the peak season for water demand. Over the 1926-27 winter the water level in the reservoir was steadily raised until it reached elevation 1832 – three feet below the spillway sills. It remained at 1832 for three weeks before the BWWS began withdrawing water again for the 1927 summer season and fluctuated between elevations 1813 and 1819 for the rest of the year. Over the next winter the water was again slowly raised until it reached elevation 1834.75 – three inches below the spillway sills on March 2 1928. It would stay there until disaster struck. After the initial filling the dam experienced some seepage problems. Most notably, seepage along a portion of the right abutment would continue from relatively early on continuously. However, the discharge water was so clear that a small pipe was set up to deliver the seepage to the nearby residence of the damkeeper, Tony Harnischfeger, for his domestic use (muddy discharge would tend to indicate a potentially serious piping problem). In addition, four large vertical tension cracks more or less equally spaced from the outlet pipes located at the center of the dam developed and expanded as the water level was raised during the 1927 season. They leaked profusely and the BWWS dealt with this by grouting and caulking each crack with oakum. During 1928, similar cracking occurred at the wing dyke. Since the BWWS design failed to include any contraction joints for this 130,000 block of concrete, it is likely, this cracking was due to the normal shrinkage associated with cement heat of hydration and played no role in the dam’s ultimate failure.
Around 8 AM on March 12, 1928, dam keeper Tony Harnischfeger called his superiors in Lo Angeles to report that muddy water was leaking from the west abutment. Mulholland and his assistant, Harvey Van Norman, immediately made the trip from downtown Los Angeles to investigate Harnischfeger’s concern. They arrived on site around 10:30 AM and with Mr. Harnischfeger made an inspection trip over the entire dam starting with the new leakage. They found the leak to be running clear – the muddy appearance was due to contact with soil as it exited the dam. They did not detect anything that could portend imminent failure of the dam and they left the dam around 12:30, about 11-1/2 hours before the dam would collapse but first stopped at Power Plant No 2 at which they directed employees at that site to 1) stop flows into the reservoir, and 2) to open three of the six 30” diameter outlet pipes. This would have been too little, too late to prevent the impending dam failure; but, I believe their goal was just to minimize the new leakage they’d just inspected until it could be repaired.
On March 12, 1928 at 11:57-1/2 PM the St Francis Dam would fail and the first victims would be dam keeper Harnischfeger, his girlfriend and his young son. They would be the first of many. The wall of water 140-foot-high as it left the dam trundled 7300 feet down the canyon to Power Plant No.2 where the now 110’ high floodwaters would obliterate the power plant and take the lives of all but three of the 67 BWWS employees and family who lived at the site (Many but not all Power Plant employees lived on site at BWWS-provided cottages). The flood wave would start as a slurry of water and sediment and would continue to accumulate sediment and debris as it wended its way along its 54-mile route to the sea (San Fransiquito Creek to Santa Clara River) destroying everything in its path. The destruction included the Edison Saugus substation, the Ridge Route bridge at Castaic Junction thereby severing the main route between Los Angeles and northern California and an Edison construction camp near the Kemp RR siding killing 84 of the 140 construction workers camped there (it should be noted that this total would’ve been much higher if not for the night watchman’s actions in alerting the sleeping workmen. The night watchman did not survive the flood). It would spread out as it passed through the Santa Clara River Valley eventually to a width of 2 miles as it flowed into the Pacific Ocean about 5 and a half hours after the failure.
The Outland and Wilkman books provide accounts from a number of the survivors. These accounts describe utter chaos, confusion and sheer terror. The noise from the oncoming flood was deafening from miles away. Many survivors described lights heading toward them and many thought the oncoming flood waters was a freight train. One thought emergency vehicles were coming their way.
The disaster also brought out the best in many. As the floodwaters raged and powerlines and substations went out, calls about the approaching disaster came into the towns of the Santa Clara River valley – Fillmore, Saticoy, Santa Paula, et al. The operators in these towns (all of them women) stayed at their board, transferring calls, contacting emergency personnel and relaying messages even though they had no way to know if they would end up in harm’s way. Local police and sheriffs raced up and down the valley in squad cars and motorcycles sirens blaring, stopping and knocking on doors warning of the danger. One motorcycle cop Thornton Edwards barely survived the flood and became known as “the Paul Revere of the St Francis Flood.” These heroes and heroines saved many lives. A steel sculpture “The Warning” was completed in 2003 in Santa Paula in honor to these heroes.
Finally, here’s a tabulation of the flood from the Outland book;
Location . . . Arrival Time . . . Elapsed Time . . . Distance . . . Avg. Velocity
St Francis Dam . . . 11:57-1/2 PM . . . ———— . . . ———– . . . ———–
Saugus SubStation . . . 12:40 AM . . . 37.5 min . . . 8.0 miles . . . 12.8 mph
Edison Camp . . . 01:18 AM . . . 38.0 min . . . 7.9 miles . . . 12.5 mph
Barsdale Bridge . . . 02:20 AM . . . 62.0 min . . . 12.7 miles . . . 12.3 mph
Santa Paula Bridge . . . 03:05 AM . . . 45.0 min . . . 8.4 miles . . . 11.2 mph
Saticoy Bridge . . . 04:05 AM . . . 60.0 min . . . 7.4 miles . . . 7.4 mph
Ocean . . . 05:25 AM . . . 80.0 min . . . 7.9 miles . . . 5.9 mph
Fr Dam to Ocean . . . 5 Hours, 27.5 minutes . . . 53.8 miles . . . 9.8 mph
Mulholland, Van Norman, and Damkeeper walking crest of dam about 12 hrs before the dam failure.Photo taken day after break. Colorized by Pony R. Horton (http://stfrancisdam.blogspot.com).The Tombstone.Aerial view (note landslide at left abutment).Concrete blocks 11 and 13 ended up several thousand feet downstream.Mulholland and Van Norman at the ruins the day after, March 13, 1928.Power Plant No. 2 before dam failure.Power Plant No. 2 after the dam failure, March 15, 1928.
Aftermath: Recovery and Restitution
An exact death total for the disaster has never been established. For months afterward bodies washed ashore along the southern California coastline. Charles Outland, writing in 1977, stated that “…any death total over 450 or under 400 is unrealistic.” Jon Wilkman in his 2016 book considers a death total of 500 or thereabouts to be the most realistic figure.
After some initial wariness, civic leaders from the city of Los Angeles and from the Santa Clara Valley realized it made sense to work together to reimburse flood victims for their damages (for death and injuries as well as property damage) and to repair and replace. An entity called the Joint Restoration Committee was created with seven members representing Los Angeles and seven members representing Ventura County, led by George Eastman president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Charles Teague, a prominent banker and rancher in Ventura County. All the costs associated with this effort would be borne by the City of Los Angeles, all payments required that city was not accepting liability for any damage, and there would be a six month statute of limitations during which claims could be made. The City of Los Angeles signed an “at cost” contract with the Associated General Contractors to clean up all flood debris and repair/replace all damaged property. Most observers agreed that this process was a success.
Although detailed accounting records were kept, there is also no agreed figure as to the overall cost of the St Francis Dam catastrophe. Outland provides detailed breakdowns of the costs for death payments, injury payments, repair and replacement costs, and agricultural and land reparations costs. He puts the total cost at around $13,500,000. Wilkman puts the cost at around $30,000,000.
Flood path.Mar. 13, 1928: View of Main Highway Bridge one and one-half miles from Castaic. Only the supports survived the flood waters following the St. Francis Dam collapse. This photo was published in the Mar. 14, 1928 Los Angeles Times.Mar. 14, 1928: Remains of homes in Santa Paula following the collapse of St. Francis Dam. This photo was published in the Mar. 15, 1928 Los Angeles Times.
Aftermath: Why Did It Happen?
BWWS officials and others traveled to the dam site on the morning of March 13 to see what was left of the dam and to begin to ascertain what had gone wrong. All that was left of the dam was the center section (which would come to be called “the tombstone”) and the wing dike that extended 600 feet beyond the right abutment. The rest of the dam had broken into numerous pieces of varying sizes (the largest weighing as much as 10,000 tons) and laying in a variety of locations – some near where they had once stood and others up to 3,000 or so feet downstream. Also, readily visible was a large landslide extending well above the height of the dam where the left abutment had once been.
It was also necessary to investigate the dam failure and attempt to determine the cause(s). Several different commissions and entities were put into place for this purpose; but, only two mattered at the time – a commission put into place by California Governor C. C. Young, and the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Inquest.
In the immediate days and weeks after the disaster numerous unfounded rumors as to the cause arose and spread like wildfire. Mullholland started the first one when he was asked shortly after the disaster what happened and speculated “an investigation will prove there was an enormous earth movement preceding the flood”. This theory did not last long as Harry O. Wood, chief of the Seismological Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (soon to become part of the California Institute of Technology) noted that there had been no recorded earthquake activity on the night of March 12. Another theory put forward by BWWS partisans was that the dam had been dynamited and they provided as evidence the number of dead fish found downstream of the failed dam. Based on the previous violence on the part of Owens Valley this was a possibility. In any event, these claims necessitated autopsies of the dead fish which found heavily silted gills – the fish had died of asphyxiation.
California Governor C. C Young appointed a six-man Board of Inquiry comprised of four prominent engineers and two prominent geologists to investigate the causes leading to the failure of St Francis Dam. The Board convened on March 19, one week after the failure, made either one or two site visits (a visit on the 22nd and maybe an earlier visit on the 20th sources vary on this) and submitted their 79-page report to Governor Young on March 27th in Los Angeles. Their conclusion was that the foundation material along the right abutment (called the Vazquez Formation at the time and now called the Sespe formation) was unsuitable for a dam foundation due to its’ tendency to slake when exposed to water and the most likely cause of the failure was seepage in this area causing piping and eventual failure. The gradual decline in the dam’s water surface elevation in the 40 minutes before the rapid decline indicated on the Stevens Automatic Water Stage Recorder (here is a photo and description of a similar type recorder) was cited in support of this theory.
The Board was composed of serious, highly-regarded and well-intentioned men, but it seems to this observer their report and the haste in which it was completed does not speak well of the process. The Board came to their conclusion long before all available physical evidence had been obtained (for example, the BWWS was still surveying and attempting to ascertain the disposition of the various concrete blocks and new geological investigations by BWWS were also not yet completed), and without interviewing more than a few witnesses – all of whom were BWWS employees. In addition, the Board relied on others to gather data, perform measurements and did not have complete access to project documents (drawings as well as construction photographs) which the BWWS had turned over to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. In addition, it appears they did not take time to digest and fully comprehend the information they were in possession of. Despite this, the Board’s conclusion would become the accepted account of the St Francis Dam failure.
The Coroner’s Inquest began on March 21 (pdf of transcript). It would include several days testimony from dozens of witnesses – starting with BWWS engineers from Mr. Mulholland and on down the chain of command, including construction laborers, relatives of the deceased and others who had grievances to air – and a field trip to the dam site. It is most notable for two things – two statements made by Mr. Mulholland and a finding/recommendation made. During his testimony, Mr. Mulholland made two statements that stood out. At one point he stated, “the only ones I envy in this thing are those who are dead”. More importantly the record shows that he took responsibility for the failure stating “Don’t blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgement, I am that human”. The main finding of the Inquest would change the way projects of this type would proceed in the future. It found the following; “A sound policy of public safety and business and engineering judgement demands that the construction and operation of a great dam should never be left to the judgement of one man, no matter how eminent, without check by independent expert authority, for no one is free from error, and checking by independent experts will eliminate the effect of human error and insure safety”.
One of many maps trying to determine where the various portions of the dam ended up.Geology of Dam Foundation.
Recent Forensic Studies
In the 1980’s a Geological Engineering professor became interested in the Saint Francis Dam story and began to study it. This engineer, J David Rogers, began his career as an investigator of the 1976 Teton Dam failure. He probably knows more about the Saint Francis Dam than anyone else. He has spent many hours at the site, mapping the geology and has read and studied all of the engineering documents and literature on the topic. With the aid of modern software, he has modeled and developed a comprehensive theory of the failure mechanism and process. A good discussion of his theory is presented in the 2016 Wilkman book.
Before discussing Professor Rogers theory, I first need to provide a little more information regarding the underlying geology at the dam foundation. As discussed earlier, the right abutment was composed of Vazquez Formation which the Governors Board fingered as the most likely culprit for the failure. However, the geology at the left abutment was every bit as problematic as that of the right. The left abutment geology consists of Pelona Schist overlain by an ancient landslide. This material continues across the valley channel and about a third of the way up the right abutment where it meets the Vazquez Formation at a fault. A geologic cross section of the dam foundation is provided. The first to recognize the potential danger associated with building a dam against this ancient landslide was noted geologist Bailey Willis in an article published in the June 25, 1928 issue of Western Construction News, but to no effect.
Getting back to Prof Rogers – His extensive study and analysis of the dam including the use of modern analytical software such as Discontinuous Deformation Analysis, leads him to conclude that a massive landslide on the east side abutment was the cause for the collapse of the dam. In addition to the east abutment geology, he marshals an avalanche of physical evidence in support of his hypothesis. Southern California Edison (SCE) operated a 70 kV powerline delivering power to Palmdale/Lancaster which ran along the east side to the reservoir. The line had two poles above the east abutment. This line went out at 11:57:30 PM causing a blackout at BPL’s San Fernando Powerplant No. 1. San Fernando Power Plant No. 2 would go offline at 12:02:30 AM when the flood demolished the site. The powerline was severed when the east abutment slide caused the powerline poles to fall away. Additionally two witnesses who travelled along the powerline road above the east abutment several hours prior to the dam failure testified that they had to negotiate dips in the road which had not been there before. Most likely the Governor’s Board was unaware of the powerline failure because the powerline and had been relocated and put back in service by SCE by the time the Board visited the site. Rogers also notes that the massive landslide of 700,000 or so cubic yards mixed in with the escaping reservoir water provides the necessary buoyancy to carry the large chunks of concrete as far downstream as they did. The gradual drawdown of the reservoir water level for 40 minutes before the abrupt failure as indicated by the Stevens recorder is due not to leakage at the west abutment, but to the dams center section tilting downstream.
I don’t know whether Rogers theory of failure is correct. However, it is the only theory to either answer or at least be consistent with the physical evidence encountered.
Design and Construction Deficiencies
The design and construction of St. Francis Dam involved many deficiencies. Some of these deficiencies were critical in its’ eventual denouement, while others played no role. Also, some of the deficiencies should be considered as deficiencies only in hindsight as the theory and practice of dam engineering was rapidly evolving at the time. In any event, I will provide a brief list of some of these deficiencies. I’ll try to list them in something close to the order they might affect the integrity of any dam.
The dam was unknowingly founded upon an inadequate foundation. The left abutment was placed against a paleo-landslide, while the right abutment consisted of a material that tended to slake when exposed to water. The most likely reason for the poor siting of the dam was that the geological investigation of the dam site during the planning and design phase was perfunctory.
The designers raised the height of the dam by twenty feet with no corresponding increase in its’ width causing the structure to be statically unstable when the water level in the reservoir got near the maximum water surface.
Hydraulic uplift was ignored in the design of the dam leading to a lower Factor of Safety than the engineers planned.
Hydraulic uplift wells were provided only in the main section in the channel, but not under either abutment. The center section with the relief wells is the only section of the main dam to remain standing.
The dam keyways at the abutments and along the channel were insufficiently deep.
Concrete production and placement procedures were deficient in several ways. First, this 205-foot high, 130,000 cubic yard water-retaining structure was built with no contraction or expansion joints thus guaranteeing that a number of large cracks would develop over the dam’s service life which would require on-going remedial work on an ad hoc basis. Second, aggregates for the concrete were not washed and, except for screening out oversize material, aggregates were not graded. Third, construction joint preparation was deficient. Laitance was allowed to stay in place between each concrete lift. It should be noted that subsequent testing of the concrete revealed that it had sufficient strength for its purpose and played no role in the dams ultimate failure.
There are more deficiencies, but this post is already too long.
Ripples
One of the most interesting aspects of the St. Francis Dam failure is how it impacted many other stories and still affects life. Below is a brief recital of these downstream impacts;
State Inspection & Regulation of Dams – In the wake of St. Francis, the California legislature passed a comprehensive dam safety bill in 1929. Under the act, all dams (except federal dams) that were either 25 feet or greater in height or which impounded 50 or more acre-feet were to be reviewed by the State Engineer and monies were set aside for that purpose. Over time this responsibility morphed into a permanent state Safety of Dams organization.
Civil Engineer Licensing – The Civil Engineers Registration Act was also signed into law by the Governor of California in 1929. The act set forth requirements (age, residency, education & experience) and responsibilities for future licensed civil engineers. A written test was required from 1930 on. However, the law also included a grandfather clause which over 5,700 individuals applied for and of which a little over 5,000 were accepted by the new Engineer’s Licensing Board. It would take another 25 years before the state would license its next 5,000 engineers. So, the St.Francis Dam failure not only ended Mulholland’s engineering career; but, it would also lead to the end of his type of engineering career path – that of the hard working young man with little formal education but plenty of desire starting with a shovel or wrench in his hand and slowly work his way into and up the ladder of the engineering profession.
Mulholland Dam Engineering Reviews and Modifications – In 1923-24, the BWWS had constructed the Weid Canyon Dam (renamed Mulholland Dam in 1925) in the Hollywood Hills and had put it into service as a reservoir. In the aftermath of St. Francis it came to light that Mulholland Dam had been the design template for St. Francis. This rightly caused consternation among those living and working below the dam. There followed one study after another of the dam. First, a restriction was placed on the dam limiting it to half capacity. Later, in 1933-34, a large buttress fill of compacted earth was placed against the dam’s downstream face. Both the volume restriction and buttress fill remain in place to this date.
Boulder Canyon Act & Design of Hoover Dam – The Reclamation Service had issued a report in 1922 for a large dam along the Colorado River to serve as both a flood control facility and as a source of electrical power. The St. Francis Dam failure put the future of what would become Hoover Dam into doubt. The Boulder Canyon plan had been promoted by Los Angeles politicians (and William Mulholland) for years. With St. Francis, politicians from Utah and Arizona who had long felt their state(s) had not come out well in the 1922 Colorado River Compact allocating water rights of the seven states contiguous with the river, saw an opportunity to either kill the plan or get a better deal for their state. What followed was the formation of a board – the Colorado River Board – comprised of five members – two noted engineers, two noted geologists and chaired by a retired Major General, William L Sibert. The Board was charged with reviewing documents and recommending the final site for the proposed dam. The Board recommended the Black Canyon site and also suggested the following; 1) Reduce the contact pressure against the foundation rock from 40 tsf (tons per square foot) to 30 tsf, 2) increase the capacity of the diversion tunnels from 100,000 cfs to 200,000 cfs, 3) increase spillway capacity to greater than 11,000 csf, and 4) increase the volume of active flood storage. The Bureau would incorporate all of these suggestions except for the reduced foundation pressure.
The BWWS would need a replacement for the St. Francis Dam. They would find the site for the new reservoir at Bouquet Canyon which is about 3 miles east of the St. Francis site. The new reservoir would require two earth embankment dams – a main dam 221 feet high and 2,125,000 cubic yards in volume and a smaller saddle dam (42 feet high and 135,000 cubic yards in volume). During construction of the new reservoir, the BWWS engineer in charge of construction, Ralph Proctor developed a new method for testing the in-place compaction of cohesive soils. He would publish his test procedures in a series of articles in Engineering News Record in August and September 1933. Proctor’s test method used the soil dry density as the standard and allowed for the two variables of soil compaction (compactive effort and moisture content) to be tested separately. The test was rapidly adopted within the engineering industry and is still the industry standard.
Hollywood, CA, 1928, intersection of Yucca & Vine. Mountain States Building in the foreground & Mulholland Dam in the background.Hollywood Dam during initial filling.Hollywood Dam, ca. 1935, Buttress Fill in place and plantings started.
Odds and Ends
As soon as the road to the San Francisquito Canyon was re-opened the dam site became a destination for sight-seers. The main attraction was the still-standing Tombstone. And, with its stair-step configuration it was an attractive nuisance. On May 27, 1928, an eighteen- year- old Leroy Parker would fall from the Tombstone to his death when he was startled by a friend who threw a snake at him. His family sued the city and the BWWS decided the Tombstone needed to go. On May 10, 1929, the Tombstone was dynamited in place.
The San Francisquito dam site is still undeveloped so one can still see what is left of the dam and its ruins. Concrete blocks or what is left of them are still visible lying where they ended up on March 12/13 of 1928, the wing dike or what is left of it is still in place and the east abutment is also in plain. The site is 30-40 minutes north of Los Angeles and for anyone considering a trip to the site here are driving directions.
Sightseers climbing the tombstone.St. Francis dam site in the 21st century looking toward left abutment. The rubble is what’s left of the tombstone and blocks 5, 6, and 7.
Instead of reading my long post, you can get the gist of the St. Francis Dam story in this Frank Black & the Catholics tune “St. Francis Dam Disaster.”
As a kid I recall adults – my parents, my grandparents, others – every now and then talk and complain about how time flies by or some similar sentiment. When they made these statements and complaints, they weren’t talking about how quickly their workday went by or how rapidly tonight’s dinner party came and went. Instead, the context of these statements generally referred to longer time frames – how quickly the last week or the last month or six months flew by.
At the time, I didn’t really understand what they were talking about and I figured it was just something adults said. And, although it is something adults say, there is a certain truth to it. I’m in my sixties now, and I understand what those adults were talking about. I’ve understood it for a while now – I don’t know when I first experienced this phenomenon – I imagine I was around 30 years of age. As far as I know, this is a common occurrence – at some point in time most of us (all of us?) experience this perception of the speeding up of time as we age.
Of course, time doesn’t actually speed up as we age. The passing of one minute, one hour, or one day is the same for a 16-year-old as for a 60-year-old, and each would agree on the amount of time elapsed. However, after the passing of some amount of time, the time will seem to have elapsed quicker to the 60-year-old than to the 16-year-old. I don’t know why that is. I never studied psychology, neuroscience, or any discipline that might touch upon the subject. That, however, hasn’t deterred me from hypothesizing on why this is so. I have two theories about this which I wish to present and see what others may think.
Theory #1: This theory is based on the differences in life experiences of children versus their elders. There are two aspects to this theory. First is the fact that as children we learn and experience new things every day and we are aware that many of these experiences are necessary hurdles on the road to adulthood and so greatly matter. Of course, people don’t stop learning things or having new experiences (including those that greatly matter) once they become adults and that leads to the second aspect of this theory which is the emotional nature of childhood. Experiences and feelings are much more intense when we are young and thus mean more and stay with us longer. Therefore, experiences which in adulthood will be viewed as the normal ebb and flow of life take on an urgent and catastrophic nature in childhood. I suppose this is somewhat similar in a much, much subtler fashion to the slowing down of things one experiences in a sudden potential life-threatening event such as a serious car crash.
Well, that’s Theory #1 and if you don’t like it, I’ve got another one for ya.
Theory #2: I gave this one a name – The Apparent Compression of Memory Theory. It works thusly. Let us say that Bob has just completed his first month as a 16-year-old. He now has another month of memories to be stored wherever memories get stored. This new month of memories is just one out of the now 193 months of memories Bob has accumulated. Moving forward and nearly doubling Bob’s age, Bob has now just come to the end of his first month as a 32-year-old and has another month of memories for storage. This new batch of memories is now only one out of 385. At age 64 and one month, Bob has another new month of memories which are only one out of 769. Every day we age, our new memories are an increasingly smaller percentage of our entire history and thus appear to be less than they actually are. If they appear less to us it must also mean that the time elapsed will also seem less to us. Exacerbating this phenomenon is the fact that there are many early memories which stay with us as we age which should also tend to “compress” our present experiencing of time. This second theory also requires that as we age this perception of time passing quicker must also continue to grow. Is that the case? I don’t know.
Well, if you’ve read along you’ve probably figured out that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. You’re probably right; but, those are my theories and I am sticking to them for now. However, perhaps you’re in a field in which you’ve studied this subject, or you’re also an old coot who has theories about this. In either case, I’d love to hear what you think.
Julius Malema, leader of South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters party.
Do you pay much attention to events in Africa? Me neither. It appears, however, that South Africa is determined to head down the same bloody path as Zimbabwe – that of radical Land Reform and racial retribution.
On February 27, the South African parliament voted 243-81 to begin the process of amending the country’s constitution to allow for confiscation of white-owned land without compensation. The motion was put forward by the Marxist party — the Economic Freedom Fighters — and supported by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party and the new president Cyril Ramaphosa (who just took office on February 18). This is bad news, not just for the white landowners but also for ordinary South African citizens and especially the poor (of which there will be more if this policy is implemented). It is also bad news for the entire African continent as South Africa is one of the few African nations with anything resembling a modern economy.
Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) gained its independence in 1980 and, to date, that first day of independence was probably the high-water mark for the nation. It quickly became a one-party nation run by the far-left Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and its demagogic leader Robert Mugabe. Early on, he implemented a toxic blend of statist economic policies, racial resentment and retribution, and government corruption, culminating in the confiscation of white-owned property.
In 1973, the per capita GDP of Rhodesia was $1,432 which has fallen to $1,081 as of 2017. I’ve included a couple of graphs which illustrate this economic decline but economic statistics tell only part of the story. In recent years, Zimbabwe has experienced epidemics of diseases such as cholera (not to mention malaria and plague) which have long since been brought under control in the developed world.
This 2005 article by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof describes how ordinary black Zimbabweans wish they could get back the white, racist government that had oppressed them prior to 1980 in order that they and their families might have enough food to live and survive. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe, which peaked shortly after the 1980 independence at 60.97 years (men & women combined) fell precipitously to a low of 44.06 years in 2002, although thankfully it has begun to rise in the last few years.
The first graph shows the GDP per capita for South Africa, Zimbabwe, and several other African nations from 1960 to 2012 as a percentage of the world average GDP per capita. The second graph compares the GDP per capita of Zimbabwe to other sub-Saharan countries from 1980-2014 with certain recent eras of Zimbabwe color-coded (pink = Land Reform, grey = Hyperinflation, light blue = government of national unity).
It seems that South Africa, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, has been able to avoid the sort of racial acrimony experienced in Zimbabwe upon the end of the archaic and evil apartheid system and the start of majority rule. Unfortunately, it looks as if that will not remain the case. There are few worse policies any nation can pursue than to murder and/or run off its most productive citizens but that appears to be the path that South Africa is set to embark upon. This article provides a much more knowledgeable take on the situation than I could.
I came across this story on the Instapundit website a couple of days ago and since then I’ve been searching without much success for articles about this in the US press. That is disturbing to me because this seems like a very big deal.
Former pro football quarterback Y. A. Tittle passed away away October 8, 2017 at the age of 90.
After a fine college career at Louisiana State University, Tittle proceeded into professional football, starting out with the Baltimore Colts in the All American Football Conference (AAFC) in 1948. When the Colts, who had joined the NFL in 1950, folded at the end of that season, he found himself with the San Francisco 49ers and he would play for the 49ers for a decade before ending his Hall of Fame career with the New York Giants at the end of the 1964 season.
Tittle is most remembered for his final few seasons with the New York Giants. Considered washed up and an “old” 34, he was traded to the Giants after the 1960 season for offensive lineman Leo Cordileone (who, when informed of the trade, quipped “Me, even up for Y A Tittle? You’re kidding.”) before the 1961 season. He would have his best seasons – leading the Giants to three straight conference titles (1961 – 63) setting & then breaking his own record for touchdown passes in a season ( 33 in 1962 followed up with 36 in 1963) along the way, although he and the Giants would lose all three NFL Championship games. A photo of Y. A. (the Y. A. stands for Yelberton Abraham – no wonder he preferred Y. A.!) taken during a September 20, 1964 game between the Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers is one of the most famous photographs in sports history. That photo, of a bloodied Tittle kneeling in the end zone after a hit by John Baker which resulted in an interception returned for a touchdown, is shown above.
Tittle had plenty of highlights during his career – he was voted the NFL MVP by UPI in 1957, 61 & 62, and the NFL MVP by both the AP and the Newspaper Enterprises Association in 1963. Of those, only the AP award still exists and is now considered the de facto MVP. He was part of the 49ers’ “Million Dollar Backfield” along with fellow Hall of Famers Joe Perry, Hugh McElhenny and John Henry Johnson from 1954-56. The 3-time first team All-Pro also teamed with split end R C Owens to develop the “alley-oop” – a play in which Tittle would toss the ball up such that the tall and excellent jumper Owens could make the catch by out-jumping his defender. His career was capped by his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971. After his playing career, Tittle had a long and successful career as the owner of an insurance firm in Palo Alto, California. He was preceded in death by his wife of 64 years, Minnette, in 2012.
RIP.
Here’s a link to a short video (5 minutes) of Tittle’s career for those so interested.
Today the Los Angeles City Council voted 14-1 to replace the celebration of Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. Thus, Los Angeles joins a number of other progressive cities including Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz in kicking Christopher Columbus to the curb in favor of indigenous peoples. The Los Angeles effort was led by Councilman Mitch O’Farrell who is a proud member of the Wyandotte tribe.
I must admit I don’t fully understand the infantile fascination and celebration by progressives of societies and peoples described variously as Native American, Indigenous Peoples, Indians (politically incorrect) or Pre-Columbian Americans (PCA’s) as some sort of numinous people. Mr O’Farrell in making the case for this change stated the following;
“Christopher Columbus’ legacy of extreme violence, enslavement, and brutality is not in dispute. Nor is the suffering, destruction of cultures, and subjugation of Los Angeles’ original indigenous people, who were here thousands of years before anyone else”.
Well, ok then. Christopher Columbus did commit many brutal acts against native peoples in his explorations of the New World, as would many other Europeans in its exploration, settling, and conquering. That, though, is neither a new nor unique story, and it’s not the reason Columbus Day was originally celebrated. The permanent linking of the Old World and the New World is a major event in human history worthy of acknowledgement. A large portion of world history is no more than the story of one group conquering another group. In fact, most of the Europeans who would settle in the New World had ancestors who many centuries earlier had themselves been conquered (and eventually civilized) by a more modern and advanced civilization — the Romans. In any event, the native Americans didn’t need any lessons in extreme violence, enslavement or brutality from Europeans. They had been engaging in these behaviors long before their initial contact with Europeans.
The most highly developed of the pre-Columbian peoples were the Maya, Aztec, and Inca. These three civilizations had much in common; well developed and elaborate irrigation and agriculture with a wide variety of domesticated animals and plants, complex social and cultural organization, advanced and intricate calendar and astronomical knowledge, highly developed religions of the pagan variety, and fierce ideologies of conquest and imperial expansion.
Like the Old World, the Maya had a hierarchical society based on wealth, prestige, and family lineage, and slavery was an integral part of society. The Maya built great stone cities and pyramids with no beasts of burden and only stone tools. This was the case for the other two as well, as these societies along with every other people throughout the New World had little or no knowledge of metallurgy or metal-working and beasts of burden (horses, oxen, et al.) did not exist in the Americas. In addition, no people in the New World had any knowledge of the wheel. The building of these pyramids and other structures must have taken an awful toll on the people compelled into this work.
The Aztecs also engaged in slavery and had a religion which required them to continually offer fresh human blood to their war god, Huitzilopochtli. This involved regular and continuous human sacrifice with most of the victims obtained in their conquering of nearby peoples and a constantly expanding empire. It is estimated that in the dedication of their most impressive pyramid in Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs may have slaughtered as many as 20,000 people, according to historian Marshall C Eakin. It is true that the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes was able to eventually conquer the Aztecs in 1521, killing as many as 100,000 in the process, with a force of 1,000 Spaniards, 80 horses, and 16 artillery pieces. However, it is also true that Cortes would never have succeeded if not for the tens of thousands of native Indian allies who fought alongside him only because of the brutal treatment they had received at the hands of the Aztecs.
The Incas built the most extensive empire in the Pre-Columbian Americas, imposing their language and religion on those they conquered in a society in which all property was in the hands of the small band of Inca rulers and everyone else was essentially a slave.
So, I wonder if Mr O’Farrell wants to celebrate these peoples and civilizations. Maybe, he just wants to celebrate native peoples in North America, like the Iroquois. Many Native American activists contend that the Iroquois and their Confederacy inspired our founders in the creation of our republic (although this is doubtful since the Iroquois, like the Inca, had no written language). Then again, Mr O’Farrell may not wish to celebrate the Iroquois, who were a militant and aggressive group, constantly making war against others. This was usually done in pursuit of wealth, such as the Beaver Wars, in which, among other things, the Iroquois decimated the Huron (also known as the Wyandotte — Mr. O’Farrell’s tribe) all just to gain control of the fur market.
Hmmm … possibly Mr. O’Farrell wishes to celebrate those Pacific tribes along the west coast. After all, he does mention Los Angeles in the above quote. Maybe tribes such as the Twana of northern Washington state, the Yurok of coastal California, the Pawnee of Oregon, or the Klamath of Southern Oregon. Then again, maybe not. Each of these tribes engaged in slavery, according to Harvard Sociology Professor Orlando Patterson in his work Slavery and Social Death.
So, maybe O’Farrell meant the Indian tribes of the plains and the east. Then again, maybe not. After all, the Creek of Georgia, Comanche of central Texas, and the Cherokee, among others, engaged in slavery. It is true, as this article discusses, that the form of slavery among these Native Americans was different than the chattel slavery employed by the European colonists. But that is small comfort to those so enslaved.
Maybe, just maybe, Mr. O’Farrell wishes to celebrate the fact that Native Americans lived closer to and in harmony with the earth. Then again, maybe not. Many Native Americans, especially in Central and South America engaged in slash and burn agriculture — hardly the most environmentally friendly activity.
The purpose of this essay is not to denigrate Native American people. They were and are an honorable and decent people. But they are no more moral than or superior to any other people, just as they are not any less moral or inferior to any other people. Each and every one of the Native Americans who first came into contact with Europeans and who would fight a losing battle to preserve their way of life against modernity was part of a tribal society of one sort or another. By my lights, tribal society is one of the worst forms of social organization. In the tribe, the individual is everywhere and always subsumed to the wishes and needs of the tribe. This tends to lead to perpetual misery and poverty and minimal technological progress.
In the Americas, especially North America, modernity in the form of Western Civilization won the battle against tribal society, and I, for one, am glad. Western Civilization, with its moral basis of a Judeo-Christian ethic, in which every human life has value and each individual is imbued with free will, has done more for human happiness and progress than other culture in human history.
President Trump and his cabinet on March 13, 2017.
A couple of months ago, I published a post which compared the Senate confirmation process during the first Obama administration and the current Trump administration. The point of the post was to document the unparalleled level of obstruction on the part of the Senate Democrats during the current cabinet confirmation process. At the time, I promised to update the comparison once the current confirmation process was completed. That happened Thursday, when the US Senate confirmed Robert Lighthizer as US Trade Representative by a vote of 84-12.
For the sake of comparison, let me re-post the cabinet confirmation table for Obama 2009;
Locke was Obama’s third pick for Commerce Secretary. His first pick New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson withdrew on January 4, 2009 due to federal investigations into his political donors. Obama’s second pick, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) withdrew citing ideological differences with the new administration.
Sebelius was Obama’s second choice for HHS. His first choice former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle withdrew on Febuary 3, 2009 due conflict of interest concerns regarding his receipt of over $16 million dollars from healthcare lobbying organizations.
Nominees Geithner, Solis and Kirk had tax issues which slowed their confirmations
The Democrats had control of the Senate during this period. After the 2008 election, the senate composition was 57 Dem, 41 Rep & 2 Ind with the Independents (Lieberman of Conn & Sanders of Vermont) caucusing with the Dems. However, because of the need to replace Obama & Biden and a contested election in Minnesota, the Democrats had only 55 senators by January 20 and did not reach the 57 total until April 26, 2009.
Trump had one cabinet nominee withdraw during the nomination process – Andy Pudzer – who was nominated for Secretary of Labor on December 8, 2016 and withdrew on February 15, 2017 due to not paying taxes on an illegal alien employee.
The Senate composition during the 2017 confirmation process is 52 Republican, 46 Democrat and 2 Independents (King of Maine and Sanders of Vermont, both of whom caucus with the Democrats).
On average Obama announced his cabinet nominees 26.5 days prior to his inauguration, while Trump announced his cabinet nominees almost two weeks earlier – 39.1 days prior to inauguration. Despite this, Obama’s nominees were confirmed earlier than were those of Trump by any method of measure. Obama’s nominees were confirmed 48.8 days after they were announced, while Trumps nominees were confirmed over three weeks later – 72.2 days after they were announced on average. Obama’s nominees were confirmed on average 15.7 days after his inauguration, while it took twice as long by this metric for Trump’s nominees to be confirmed – 34.4 days after Trumps’ inauguration. Obama’s eighteen cabinet nominees received a grand total of 110 nay votes, while the nineteen Trump nominees received five times as many nay votes – 550.
This nomination cycle witnessed several firsts – the first time a Vice President cast the tie-breaking vote for a cabinet nomination (Betsy DeVos at Education) & the first time a nominee who is a current U S Senator (Jeff Sessions at DOJ) has had a sitting U S Senator testify against him (the grandstanding Cory Booker of New Jersey). And, except for Pudzer, who withdrew, the Trump nominees did not have the scandal problems of the Obama nominees. The level of obstruction by the Democrats during this nomination cycle was truly historic and appalling.
The NFL owners have voted (by a vote of 31-1) to allow the Oakland Raiders to move to Las Vegas. What’s not clear is exactly when the move will take place. A new $1.9 billion dollar stadium (which would make it the most expensive stadium to date) is planned to be built in Las Vegas but is not scheduled to be open until 2020.
The Raiders will play in Oakland in 2017 and have an option in Oakland for 2018. Whether Oakland will still want them in 2018 is probably an open question and, in any case, with the new stadium not ready until 2020, arrangements will need to be made for a stadium and a city to play in for the 2019 season.
This article from a week ago in the San Jose Mercury News discusses the business plan and economics of the move for both the city of Las Vegas and for the Raiders.
Las Vegas will provide $750 million for the new $1.9 billion, 65,000 seat indoor stadium via the sale of bonds that will be repaid over 30 years by an increase in a hotel room tax. Las Vegas city leaders forecast that the new stadium will draw an additional 450,000 visitors per year who will spend an average of 3.2 days per visit. They also forecast that about a third of the Raider tickets will be purchased by these visitors although no other city in the NFL averages even 10 percent of tickets by visitors. Stanford economics professor Roger Noll is highly skeptical of the plan stating that none of the city’s assumptions have ever taken place anywhere. He states that “the probability that it could happen isn’t zero, but it’s pretty close to zero.”
I’m not an economist, but I share professor’s assessment of the city’s assumptions. That said, I think that Las Vegascould support an NFL team. The population of its Combined Statistical Area of 2.3 million is 27th in the United States, so it would be a mid-market franchise. I don’t know who else would also be fans of the new Las Vegas Raiders. My memory is that the north Nevada population center of Reno tends to support the Bay Area teams and my guess is that they split 50/50 between being fans of either the San Francisco or the Oakland teams. Also, I’d guess that most Bay Area Raiders fans will find other interests during football season. And, the idea that Los Angeles, which now has two NFL teams and where the Raiders played from 1992-1994, would provide any substantial fan base is a pipe dream. In the meantime, there should be plenty of seats available at Oakland-Alameda Stadium during Raiders games starting in 2017.
What’s Heathkit? Well, the version I knew, and which was the most successful edition, was a company that offered a large variety of electronic and electrical equipment in kit form to the public. That’s a far cry from the original Heath Company, which was founded in 1912, as an aircraft company by Edward Bayard Heath, an early aviation pioneer.
Heath Parasol 1935.
In 1926, Heath began selling a light airplane – the Heath Parasol in kit form. Heath died in a 1931 test flight accident and the company floundered until it went into the electrical kit business in 1947 shortly after World War II. That business thrived for several decades before closing up shop in 1992.
My interest in Heathkit began when I watched my Dad build a Heathkit stereo system. I must have been in junior high school at the time. Prior to that my dad had built me a 5-tube AM radio – the BR-2 which was on my dresser drawer for years. The BR-2 was an early 1950’s design that I believe is regarded as a classic among radio enthusiasts – below are photos of the BR-2 with its cabinet, the BR-2 without its cabinet and the BR-2 schematic.
In any event, shortly thereafter I began to buy and build Heathkit products and would continue at it for a decade or so, building radios, receivers, turntables, test meters of all sorts, auto diagnostic equipment and a color television. It was not necessary to know much electrical theory in order to build any Heathkit product; but, it was nigh impossible not gain some knowledge of electricity and electronics in the process of building any kit. All that was required was the ability to read and follow directions, and enough patience and persistence to see a task through to completion. Heathkit would do the rest.
The product was well designed by the Heatkit engineers. Each kit came with a detailed, thorough and easy to read assembly manual. The manual included 1) a complete parts list, 2) sections on safety and proper soldering techniques, 3) color and other codes for resistors, capacitors, etc 4) step by step written assembly procedures with adequate sketches including intermediate and final test procedures with a box to check off each step, 5) schematic(s), 6) a section on the theory of operation for the device, and 7) a troubleshooting section.
Heathkit projects also did not require an overwhelming number of tools. Generally all that was needed were a soldering iron, spool(s) of solder (I think solder came with each kit – it was a warranty issue for Heathkit) , several pliers (needle nose and diagonals being the most useful) wire cutters and trimmers, some test gear (a VOM and ammeter – which Heathkit helpfully offered in kit form) and an assortment of screwdrivers and nutdrivers. One or more muffin or cupcake tins were perfect for sorting parts until they were needed. Oh, and a pencil to check each step along the way.
This New York Times obituary of the company in 1992 does a good job of explaining the legacy of Heathkit and the causes for it’s demise. The continued technological improvements in electronics with integrated circuits (IC) taking the place of various circuits and the accompanying discrete components led the kit-building model towards extinction. It’s just not much fun plugging in a couple of IC’s and there were no longer any labor costs to be saved. Oh, and I didn’t know that Barry Goldwater also caught the Heathkit bug.
I was just one of hundreds of thousands (actually probably millions) to derive pleasure and satisfaction from my Heathkit experience.
The Democrats all out attempts to derail and obstruct the cabinet picks of President Trump are, to my knowledge, unsurpassed in history. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this; but, I am. Egged on by their far left base and the fact that the party as evidenced by their elected representatives has moved from the center-left to the left leaves them no option but to fight a series of losing battles in these confirmation battles.
I thought I’d compare the Trump cabinet picks and Senate confirmation process with the Obama cabinet and confirmation process for his first term in order to document how the process has changed in the last eight years. First up, Obama 2008-09.
Locke was Obama’s third pick for Commerce Secretary. His first pick New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson withdrew on January 4, 2009 due to federal investigations into his political donors. Obama’s second pick, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) withdrew citing ideological differences with the new administration.
Sebelius was Obama’s second choice for HHS. His first choice former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle withdrew on Febuary 3, 2009 due conflict of interest concerns regarding his receipt of over $16 million dollars from healthcare lobbying organizations.
Nominees Geithner, Solis and Kirk had tax issues which slowed their confirmations.
The Democrats had control of the Senate during this period. After the 2008 election, the senate composition was 57 Dem, 41 Rep & 2 Ind with the Independents (Lieberman of Conn & Sanders of Vermont) caucusing with the Dems. However, because of the need to replace Obama & Biden and a contested election in Minnesota, the Democrats had only 55 senators by January 20 and did not reach the 57 total until April 26, 2009.
For both Obama and Trump, I tabulated the following three time spans – 1) the length of time between the announcement and the inauguration for each nominee (the earliest date any nominee can be confirmed), 2) the length of time between the announcement and the confirmation for each nominee, and 3) the length of time between inauguration day and confirmation for each nominee. For Obama, the times for these eighteen cabinet posts (I ignored Gates) the averages were 26.5 days for Item 1 (i.e. – Obama named his eventual cabinet secretary at these 18 posts on average 26.5 days prior to January 20, 2009), 48.8 days for Item 2 and 15.7 days for Item 3. I’ll provide the totals for the Trump nominees after the Trump Cabinet Nomination table.
Trump 2016-2017
Dept – – – – Nominee —Announc –ConfirmVote
State – – – – Tillerson – -12/13/16 -2/1/17 56-43
Defense – – Mattis – – – 12/01/16 -1/20/17 98-1
Justice – – -Sessions – -11/18/16 – 2/8/17 52-47
Treasury – -Mnunchin -11/30/16
Interior – – -Zinke – – – 12/15/16
Agriculture -Perdue – -1/18/17
Commerce – -Ross – – -11/30/16
Labor – – – – Pudzer – -12/8/16
HHS – – – – -Price – – – 11/29/16
Education – DeVos – – 11/23/16 – – 2/7/17 51-50
HUD – – – – Carson – -12/5/16
Transportation Chao -11/29/16 – -1/31/17 93-6
Energy – – – Perry – – -12/14/16
VA – – – – – -Shulkin – -1/1/17
Home Sec – Kelly – – 12/7/16 – – – -1/20/17 88-11
EPA – – – – -Pruitt – – 12/7/16
OMB – – – -Mulvaney 12/16/16
UN Amb – -Haley – – -11/23/16 – – -1/24/17 96-4
USTR – – – Lighthizer 1/3/17
So far, only seven of the nineteen cabinet nominees have been confirmed. At the same point (February 9) in the Obama Administration fourteen of the eighteen Obama nominees had been confirmed. Only those posts with nominee issues (Commerce, Labor, HHS and US Trade Rep) remained. In addition, the total number of nay votes for all eighteen of the Obama nominees totaled 110. The number of nay votes for the first seven Trump nominees already totals 162. This nominating cycle has witnessed several firsts – the first time the Vice President has had to cast the tie-breaking vote in a cabinet nomination – the first time a nominee who is a current senator has had a fellow senator testify against his nomination.
For the Trump nominees, the Republicans are in control of the Senate at 52-46-2 (again both independents – King of Maine & Sanders of Vermont caucus with the Dems).
Trump nominated his cabinet secretaries significantly earlier than Obama – an average of 42.6 days prior to inauguration day as compared to Obama’s 26.5 days. The seven confirmed nominees have averaged 61.9 days between announcement and confirmation versus 48.8 days for all eighteen of Obama’s secretaries). The time frame for the Trump nominees will only continue to rise. So far, the time between inauguration day and confirmation for the Trump nominees is 9.6 days compared to 15.7 days for the entire Obama cabinet. Again, the time for the Trump nominees will only grow and will end up being at least twice that for Obama.
I don’t think this is bias on my part; but, the Trump nominees have none of the scandal problems that plagued the Obama nominees. None have had cause to withdraw (and it appears that none will have cause to withdraw), while Obama had three nominees that were compelled to withdraw due to scandal. Three Obama nominees had actual tax problems which required remediation of one sort or another prior to confirmation, while none have that sort of problem among the Trump nominees (although the Democrats are attempting to call into question some of HHS nominee Price’s investments and reporting thereof). Of course this ignores that according to the Democrats, Jeff Sessions is an unrepentant racist and Betsy DeVos wants to destroy public education.
What bothers me most about this, is that I tend to believe every president should get the nominees he wants for his cabinet in the absence of significant disqualifying factors that an average disinterested citizen would recognize. The battle should be on ideas and policy. The Democrats are in the process of setting a new standard – essentially every nominee of the opposition party is to be opposed. Like the filibuster issue, this will come back to bite the Democrats in the future. As for the Obama 2008-2009 nominees, I would have voted for all except for one – Attorney General nominee Eric Holder who had disqualified himself due to his involvement in the Marc Rich pardon and the pardons of several terrorists at the end of the Clinton Administration.
The confirmation process for the Trump cabinet is not yet over. When it’s complete, I plan to update the tables and make a final comparison between the Obama and Trump cabinet confirmation process.
One of Hillary Clinton’s campaign proposals is for additional infrastructure spending to the tune of $250 billion over five years. According to the Clinton campaign, this program would be paid for by “business tax reform. It’s not clear what “business tax reform” entails, but it sounds to me like higher taxes on corporations and high income earners. Clinton claims this would create tens of thousands of jobs, stimulate the economy and fix a failing infrastructure.
Anyone who’s been paying attention during the Obama years should not be surprised by this proposal. It has been a recurring theme throughout his term in office. Infrastructure spending was a major component of the 2009 Stimulus Bill accounting for $105 billion of “shovel-ready” public works projects in the approximately $900 stimulus package. Obama and congressional Democrats have continued to call for additional infrastructure spending as a stimulus despite the fact that the 2009 stimulus failed in its stated goals of 1) keeping the unemployment rate below 8% (I believe it peaked at a tick above 10%), and 2) in providing economic stimulus (GDP growth has bounced around between 1% and 2% through the Obama years). Even Obama eventually did admit that there were no “shovel-ready” projects.
You would think this would be an easy issue for the Republican presidential candidate to oppose by noting the historical failures of public works projects in stimulating economic growth, and the need to get our fiscal house in order what with the federal government debt over $19 trillion and rising and annual deficits of hundreds of billions that will only rise without major reforms of our entitlement programs. However, you would be wrong. Republican presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump has called Clinton’s proposal “a fraction of what we need” and has at various times called for either doubling or quadrupling of Clinton’s proposal to either a $500 billion or a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Trump would pay for this massive spending increase by borrowing via the selling of bonds, stating in his usual blustering fashion “We’ll get a fund, we’ll make a phenomenal deal with low interest rates and rebuild our infrastructure.”
Trump, like Clinton, claims the nation’s crumbling infrastructure demands a large infrastructure investment program. In making this argument, Clinton cites the most recent American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card. Whether Trump has ever heard of the ASCE Report Card is unknown, but he too claims our infrastructure is in a state of disrepair. I’ve had issues with the ASCE Report Card since the first one was issued in 1988 and I discussed those issues here. Basically, the grade criteria set by ASCE will result in grades clustered around C for any mature nation with a well-developed infrastructure.
Trump, like Clinton, also asserts that increased levels of infrastructure spending will lead to economic stimulus. Trump told the New York Times in a phone interview that borrowing and spending would help lift economic growth. “It’s called priming the pump,” Mr Trump told the Times. “Sometimes you have to do that a little bit to get things growing. We have no choice — otherwise, we are going to die on the vine.” On this, Trump sounds like the liberal Democrat he has been his whole adult life until a few months ago. I would bet that if you showed or explained each candidate’s proposal to Paul Krugman in a blind test he would pick Trump’s plan in a New York minute. And, hey, whats not to like? More spending and more debt — that’ll get any economy humming in no time!
It seems like almost every day, in one way or another, the Republican party with Donald Trump as its standard-bearer inches further and further left.
There’s no real point to this post other than to briefly discuss and celebrate the career of one of the great character actors of all time — Ward Bond (1903-1960). First, I have to admit I don’t know much more about Bond’s life than that presented in his 
Baseball great 
Academy Awards and had won a couple, its theme song was a well-deserved staple, film critics then and now all seemed to have nothing but good things to say about it, it was directed by 
Monday, November 5, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released a 414-page 
As a kid I recall adults – my parents, my grandparents, others – every now and then talk and complain about how time flies by or some similar sentiment. When they made these statements and complaints, they weren’t talking about how quickly their workday went by or how rapidly tonight’s dinner party came and went. Instead, the context of these statements generally referred to longer time frames – how quickly the last week or the last month or six months flew by.
Today the Los Angeles City Council voted 14-1 to 
The NFL owners have 
One of Hillary Clinton’s campaign proposals is for additional infrastructure spending to the tune of 