Sep. 26th, 2002

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Rittenhouse links to these stories, which you'll have to read there, because I can't quite bring myself to write about them, except to say that a horribly abused kid died because we've learned not to see people dying.

I was really annoyed yesterday that the homeless guy with no legs had placed himself outside McDonalds, because it's so tacky to be begging where you know people have change. Me and my overpriced and completely non-nutritive Diet Coke swept on by, though.

In other dignity and compassion news, they're finally getting those filth who make the Bumfight videos off the streets.

I recommend you go to Jeanne's page for some compassion and simple human decency. I'm not too impressed with mine today.
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• I know we're all happy (well, anyway, I am) that Mr. Daschle has finally said something to draw the country's attention to the fact that Our Fearless Leader is not behaving, as we say in parenting circles, appropriately.

I'd have been even happier if he hadn't waited until this came out. One of the highlights of a CBS News poll released yesterday is the rather startling fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans, including a scant majority of Republicans, think congress should be asking the President more questions about the war.

You go Al Gore, says I. At least he seems to have learned something about the costs of apologizing for being a Democrat.

• Speaking of Florida, McBride is within six points of Bush in polls. Fewer than fifty percent of Floridians surveyed planned to vote to reelect him.

One of the detectives from the jogger case says he thinks Reyes is lying. Why? Because he says the convicted kids weren't there, and no-one saw them together.

I feel quite sure there's a small logical fallacy involved with that answer.

People are dying in abandoned mines.

Dozens of people die at abandoned mines each year in accidents that are supposed to be prevented by a government program intended to clean up such dangerous sites, subsidized by a tax that coal companies have paid since 1977.

These tax revenues have collected in a government trust fund that now holds $1.54 billion. But the federal government refuses to spend most of the money, holding it back to help offset the budget deficit, raising continuing complaints from state officials as more people die.

The federal government has recorded 78 deaths in abandoned or inactive mines since January 2000, including 26 this year. The numbers are incomplete, and the actual death count is probably higher, the government concedes.


We should do something about that. Unfortunately, we can't.

"With all these deaths and injuries, I would think that is all the proof you would need to free up this money," said Mike Kastl, director of the abandoned mines program in Oklahoma, where 25 people - 14 children and 11 adults - have died in old mine accidents in recent times.

The government taxes coal companies 10 cents to 35 cents a ton for the cleanup fund, and that money is added to the Abandoned Mine Lands Trust Fund, which holds enough money to clean up almost half of the most dangerous abandoned mines nationwide.

But this year, like every year since the fund's inception in 1977, the money is caught up in the federal budget battle, though by law it cannot be spent on anything other than mine cleanup projects.

"We'd like to use more of the money," said Danny M. Lytton, a senior official in the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining, which administers the fund. "Most years we aren't able to spend even as much as we collect."

This is a result of a peculiar federal budget idiosyncrasy. When the abandoned mine trust fund was authorized, it was designated "on budget," as are most government trust funds. That means the money is held in the government's general treasury pool, although it cannot be spent on anything else.

When the Interior Department asks to spend part of the fund, the request must compete with those from every other program in the department. Any increase in spending must be offset by a decrease somewhere else. A result, federal officials acknowledge, is that that the money is held back to help lower the budget deficit.


Current mine slush fund: $1.54 billion.

Ryan v. Ryan Death Match

Jim Ryan's the (R) attorney general in Illinois. George Ryan's the (R) governor. He's been a bad boy. He's leaving.

Jim's running for governor. He's eleven points behind the Democrat, but only half that once voters are told that he's not the other one. This is not a good thing for a candidate who has massively outspent his opponent.

He's a little pissed with the other one.

Jim likes executing people. One of the people he tried real hard to execute turned out to be innocent of the charges (the DNA said).

George doesn't like people getting killed by accident. He's declared a moratorium on Illinois killing people while he works it out.

Jim doesn't like that one bit. He says once he's elected, the moratorium is over.

George doesn't like that one bit. He's talking about commuting all the sentences to life imprisonment.

Jim doesn't like that. He's suing to stop the commutations.

The Democratic challenger, who (possibly for the first time in his career in politics) rejoices in the name of Rod R. Blagojevich, says he will extend the moratorium.

Mr Ehrlich voted to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits yesterday. He also voted to let hospitals which provide government subsidized care decide which reproductive health services they choose to make available to their patients. Leaving aside abortion, this also means that women who use the catholic hospital system or affiliated Medicaid plans can wave goodbye to their birth control and rape victims can go whistling for morning after pills.

Moderate, that boy.

His people say that NARAL just doesn't like him.

Go figure.

They also won't have to respect living wills or stop life support.
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Asked if he wanted President Bush to lift the embargo, Ventura said, "In the long run, it's what I'd like to see happen."

He said Cuban President Fidel Castro came by the Minnesota display, but the two had not met one-on-one.

Ventura dismissed critics who have accused him of giving aid and comfort to the enemy by visiting the island nation. "I'm a capitalist from the word 'go,'" he said. "Anyone who's ever looked at my career knows I believe in capitalism."

Still, he said, "at age 51, I like having friends better than I do enemies."

The former Navy SEAL noted that 58,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam, "and yet we have no problem today trading with Vietnam."

He also urged Americans to be skeptical of reports by some U.S. government officials that the Cuban government is so short of cash it will not pay companies to trade with the island.

"Let's remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fraud, and our government told us that was real," he said about the event that sparked U.S. military involvement in Vietnam during the 1960s.


Later, responding to substantive questions from the media, Ventura dismissed the suggestion that his desire for Cuban cigars might be coloring his feelings about the embargo. "My favorite cigar right now is made in the Dominican Republic," he said.

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