Combat! - Page 85 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

How against Bernie Sanders is this anti-Sanders attack ad?

By Dan Brooks in Democratic Candidates January 26, 2016 0 Comment

Scare tactics

The New York Times reports that the ESA Fund, a super PAC founded by Joe Ricketts of TD Ameritrade, has spent $600,000 to run this ad on television before the Iowa caucus. It characterizes Bernie Sanders as “too liberal for Iowa,” but is it really meant to hurt his chances? Perhaps I am too liberal for Iowa, too, but this spot makes Sanders sound pretty good. He also sounds good in this ostensibly damning quote from the president of the ESA Fund, Brian Baker:

When it comes to federal spending and piling on our massive debt, Secretary Clinton is a five-car pile-up, but Senator Sanders is a train wreck. Given that Senator Sanders is the leading candidate in Iowa and New Hampshire and way ahead in the general election polls, ESA Fund will work hard to inform voters about his record and future plans.

Oh please, Democrats—please don’t make us run against Bernie Sanders in the general. We simply could not survive that briar patch. These final remarks from Baker were not transcribed, as he hurried away from the microphone to award his own party’s nomination to a crypto-fascist whom 70% of the country loathes. Video after the jump.

A petition to replace the n-word with “Inca” in hip hop

By Dan Brooks in Rap January 25, 2016 6 Comments

Reclaiming the n-word has been one of the few successful projects of our lifetime, and most of the thanks belongs to hip hop. The n-word used to be a word white people said to black people. Now it is a word black people say to one another, while white people hope silently that a black person will say it to them. This situation is better in all regards—except, ironically, for hip hop. The prevalence of the n-word in rap poses a major problem to its largest audience demographic, white people between the ages of 18 and 35. Now that the work of reclamation has been achieved, we should agree to replace the n-word in music with the word “Inca,” so that when we are rapping along with “Pass Dat,” we don’t have to choose between saying the n-word fifty times and delivering an inferior performance.

Combat! blog hews to resolutions, isn’t useful

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized January 22, 2016 3 Comments

A scrivener

Remember that thing I wrote the other day about how the first two-hour slot of my workday is currently devoted to fiction? Some days, two hours is all you get. There is no Combat! blog today, owing to a surfeit of other obligations. While I type them words for readers who pay better than you, how about you read this long-ish Politco story about the revitalization of Des Moines, headlined How America’s Dullest City Got Cool. Caveat: it’s still not that cool. I know because I grew up there, and I return often to visit my family. But it’s much cooler now than it was in when I was a surly teen. Basically, the story has two parts: Des Moines was America’s dullest city (when I lived there,) then it got cool (after I left.) Colin Woodard puts it better than I do, and you should read his version. I’ll see you back here Monday, with an actual damn blog in addition to my secret novella.

What is the Carlyle Group doing with our water company?

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized January 21, 2016 0 Comment

The Mountain Water Company (artist’s conception)

If you do not live in Missoula, you may be but dimly aware of the city’s struggle to buy the Mountain Water company. In June, Judge Karen Townsend ordered The Carlyle Group to sell the town’s water infrastructure to the City of Missoula as eminent domain. It was valued at $88.6 million, a number the city briefly appealed before withdrawing on January 6. On January 11, Liberty Utilities announced that it had finalized purchase of Mountain Water, along with two other water works in California, by purchasing its parent company, Park Water.

Ordered to sell Mountain Water to the city of Missoula six months ago, Carlyle just sold it to somebody else. The move took everyone by surprise, including the city and the Montana Public Services commission. The PSC has to approve every utility sale in the state, and they didn’t approve this one. But Liberty utilities has reserved the right to “raise jurisdictional issues” if the PSC tries to overturn the deal. Because Liberty acquired it in an “upstream transaction,” Mountain Water still has the same owner: Park Water. It’s just that Park Water is now owned by Liberty Utilities instead of the Carlyle Group.

So now the City of Missoula still buys Mountain Water from Park Water for $88.6 million, right? Liberty just deposits the check instead of Carlyle. Maybe—unless the Montana Supreme Court finds for Carlyle in its appeal of the eminent-domain condemnation, and as long as the PSC doesn’t make Mountain Water the object of an interstate lawsuit among two regulatory agencies and a hedge fund, and as long as Liberty doesn’t add any new lawsuits of its own.

The city will have to hire lawyers to represent its interests in all these cases. So far, our bill for this process comes to $4 million. That’s 5% of the purchase price. At want point does the cost of doing business exceed our willingness to buy? If the answer is never, Carlyle can easily take us into deep water.

The Carlyle Group took in $962 million of revenue in 2014. It’s possible Mountain Water has generated more income during than it cost to keep it tied up in court. There are a lot of reasons to interpret the multinational equity fund’s bizarre move last week as part of a war of attrition. You can read all about ’em in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent.

This quagmire is becoming a boondoggle. If you’re just catching up to this story, now is a good time to jump in. The Indy’s own Kate Whittle wrote this handy explainer describing the chronology and salient issues in the case. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

The tomatoes in the word salad of Palin’s Trump endorsement speech

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates January 20, 2016 2 Comments

Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump in Ames, Iowa.

Do not read it aloud or you will summon her, but the full text of Sarah Palin’s endorsement speech for Donald Trump is here. Props to Smick for the link. Palin’s style has always worked better in speech than it does in print. More than one journalist has complained that the hardest part of transcribing her is knowing where to put the periods. She hews to a verbless, pastiche style reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg, if Ginsberg worked primarily in cliché. What is most striking about Palin’s speech from last night is the way it swings from phrase to ready phrase—in it to win it, drill baby drill, failed agenda, lead from behind, we the people and, now, make America great again—much as Tarzan swings from vine to vine. She’s just hollering in the spaces between. Still, certain themes emerge. Video after the jump.