Combat! - Page 136 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

No one knows what a good deal on Mountain Water would look like

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized January 15, 2015 1 Comment

The view from Water Works hill—photo by Lido Vizutti

On Monday, the City Club of Missoula hosted a debate on the ongoing effort to purchase Mountain Water. For those of you who live out of town for some reason, Mountain Water is the local water utility, owned by the Carlyle Group. After Carlyle rebuffed its offer to buy, the city began pursuing condemnation by eminent domain, but it turns out the global asset management term has some tricky lawyers—possibly even trickier than those hired by the sleepy mountain town. We’ve already blown through our original $400,000 in estimated legal costs, and we’re not close to the end. The mounting costs of condemnation raise a question: how much can we spend to buy Mountain Water and still get a good deal? Surprisingly, neither city councilman present at Monday’s debate had an answer. They didn’t even have rough estimates. In this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, I humbly suggest that might be a problem. A plan to buy something at any cost is not a plan to get a good deal. Give it a read, and then right a series of comments about what an Obama I am. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

House weakens Dodd-Frank twice in one month amid lobbying blitz

By Dan Brooks in corporatocracy January 14, 2015 0 Comment

Former Mass. Sen. Scott Brown now works for Peabody Nixon in “business and government affairs.”

The Dodd-Frank Act is not quite five years old, but it has already become an intolerable obstacle to the ~~American economy~~ finance industry. Don’t worry: the finance, insurance and real estate industry spent $74 million on 704 registered lobbyists in the first three quarters of 2014. That’s a 2.5 percent increase in a year where every other industry’s lobbying expenditures went down. It was money well spent. Since mid-December, the House has voted to impose stricter cost-benefit analyses and judicial reviews on all enforcement agencies; today, it is expected to postpone enforcement of Dodd-Frank provisions and weaken related regulations on financial services. You didn’t think the finance industry would invest $74 million unwisely. I mean, what is this, 2008?

Tim Kreider on the specious danger of Western art

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media January 13, 2015 1 Comment

The first cover of Charlie Hebdo since last week’s attacks reads “all is forgiven.”

Ben al-Fowlkes sent me this excellent essay by Tim Kreider, in which the former political cartoonist notes how much more dangerous art seems to be for Islamists and North Koreans than it is for anyone in the West. That’s good: most of the reason we’re not afraid of art is that our civil society is stable and well-developed, and we’re confident enough in our ideologies that we don’t have to silence anyone who suggests they’re flawed. But part of it, as Kreider points out, is that contemporary Western culture has made art frivolous and anodyne:

“In the mature democracies of the West, there’s no longer any need for purges or fatwas or book-burnings. Why waste bullets shooting artists when you can just not pay them? Why bother banning books when nobody reads anyway, and the national literature is so provincial, insular and narcissistic it poses no troublesome questions?”

Kreider is good at the relieved lament, and he finds in the international outrage at the Charlie Hebdo attacks “a small, irrational twinge of guilt that we’re not doing anything worth shooting us over.”

Missoulian blurs line between advertisement and news, again

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media January 12, 2015 0 Comment

The Thomas Meagher Bar, formerly Sean Kelly’s, in Missoula

The Thomas Meaghar Bar is as lively as its namesake, says the headline of this news item in the Missoulian about a new bar downtown. Its namesake died 150 years ago, but whatever. The important thing is that it’s lively—or it will be, once people start coming. “I don’t think everybody knows that we’re completely open,” manager Cory Champney says. He is the only source in this 800-word article about a local business, which makes it less a news story and more an advertorial.

Friday links! Sounds of sodomy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized January 9, 2015 0 Comment

A tractor pulls a pickup truck out of the mud.

Should children be exposed to the sounds of sodomy? That’s the (presumably rhetorical) question that an Irish anti-gay group asks in this pamphlet urging voters to oppose adoption for homosexual couples. Won’t somebody please think of the children while he’s railing hot twinks? And sure, people have a right to do things that we find unpleasant, but we shouldn’t have to confront any evidence of it. Today is Friday, and one man’s hot action is another’s clarion call. Won’t you try something a little different with me?