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Deputy finds $800,000 in undeposited checks at Ravalli treasurer’s office

By Dan Brooks in Ravalli County Treasurer January 30, 2014 2 Comments

Suspended Ravalli County treasurer Valerie Stamey, photographed by Alex Sakariassen

The Montana Department of Revenue has threatened to fine Ravalli County $37,000 if it does not file delinquent property tax reports soon. The good news is that the interim heads of the county treasury, Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg and the pleasingly-named deputy Dan Whitesitt, found $800,000 worth of undeposited checks dating back to November. Valerie Stamey, the treasurer who claimed to have uncovered a criminal conspiracy among county commissioners when they accused her of doing nothing since she was appointed, turns out to have done pretty much nothing since she was appointed.

SOTU kind of a promise, kind of a threat

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government January 29, 2014 1 Comment

Stephen Crowley of the New York Times wins the Combat! blog Obama Photo of the Year.

In last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama offered a modest agenda that he proposed to enact “with or without Congress”—mostly through executive orders. For those of us who voted for him in 2008, it was a call to ambivalence. It would be nice to see the President do things like raise the minimum wage for federal contractors or curb carbon emissions, and Congress has certainly made Washington less effective by its recalcitrant opposition. But if an adversarial relationship with Congress is the problem, enacting minor policies by presidential fiat will only exacerbate it. And at this moment in our federal government, do we want to give more power to the executive branch?

Close readings: Let’s contemn Peter Hitchens

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading January 28, 2014 2 Comments

Which is the fun brother?

I was looking for essays about Flashman yesterday and ran across this appreciation by Peter Hitchens, self-described Burkean conservative and brother of Christopher Hitchens. Burkean conservatism was last seen railing against the French revolution, but it’s not Hitchens’s archaic politics that irritate me. It’s his overblown prose. Here he is on the Flashman books:

I’ve re-read many of them since, but one by one, on various long journeys where I knew for certain they’d keep me from tedium as the plane ground slowly through the night.

The reader will be shocked to learn that Hitchens reads books one at a time. And what’s the perfect verb for how a plane flew? Oh yeah: ground.

Richard Sherman: “thug” is acceptable n-word

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture January 27, 2014 5 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPD_Lgq7IyI

By now you have probably seen Richard Sherman’s postgame interview, shot seconds after he tipped an end zone pass to his teammate and won the NFC championship for the Seattle Seahawks. Due to my jet-setter lifestyle, I heard about this video for days before I actually saw it, and the real thing was kind of anticlimactic. Sherman has a rad voice—presumably from yelling on football fields for ten years straight—and he criticizes Michael Crabtree, whom he is rumored to dislike. Mostly, he declares himself the best cornerback in the game. It’s kind of unseemly and kind of awesome, as human beings in celebration are. It also led a bunch of commenters to call him a thug. On Thursday, Sherman opined that “thug” is an acceptable way of calling a black man the n-word.

Friday links! Pleiotropy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links January 24, 2014 1 Comment

A male guppy you totally want to bang because he looks like an orange fruit

Pleiotropy is the scientific term for when a single gene produces two unrelated effects. For example, male guppies like the one pictured above tend to be orange and have that spot on their tale—possibly because that color and pattern are sexually attractive to females, but mostly because they look like a piece of fruit. Props for the link to my girlfriend Lucretia, who can read and understand scientific articles much better than me. Nature has made wild male guppies orange not because it’s useful or sexy, but because breeding females mistake them for food. Today is Friday, and cause precedes motive in such a way that sense comes only after effect. Won’t you explore some terrifying coincidences with me?