News: December 2006 Archives

The first part in what is sure to be an ongoing series about The Donald's awesomeness, Trump's immense patriotism stomps Palm Beach flat.

Donald Trump is suing this oceanside town for $10 million after being cited for flying an oversized American flag over his Mar-a-Lago Club.

Attorneys for the club filed a complaint Thursday, saying that flying the flag is a constitutionally protected expression of free speech — and that the large flag is a proper match for the size of the real-estate mogul’s patriotism.

“A smaller flag and pole on Mar-A-Lago’s property would be lost given its massive size, look silly instead of make a statement, and most importantly would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s and the Club’s members’ patriotism,” the lawsuit says.

I'm sure it's that, and not the simple fact that The Donald wants to do whatever he wants without regard for pesky regulations.

Town officials said Trump violated zoning codes when the lavish club hoisted a 15-by-25-foot flag atop an 80-foot pole on Oct. 3. The citation was for having a flagpole taller than 42 feet, for not obtaining a building permit and for not getting permission from the landmarks board. ...

“The day you need a permit to put up the American flag, that will be a sad day for this country,” Trump said in October.

The Donald is awesome because he does with his money what we all wish we could do: harass the government for all the stupid regulations that take the fun out of life.

(HT: Perez Hilton.)

Update 061229:

The flag is so big it can't fly at half mast for Gerald Ford!

Meanwhile, The Donald apparently isn't all that sad about former President Gerald Ford's passing. As Ben Widdicombe reports, the Stars-and-Stripes above his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach is so big, it can't fly at half-mast because it would knock down the 40-foot palm trees nearby, so it's at three-quarters mast.

Merry Christmas, etc. I'm on vacation this week so I'm pretty busy doing nothing, which includes reading the news. There isn't much blog traffic either, so, I doubt anyone is reading this.

What's the best present you got this year? What's the best present you gave?

UCLA sent out an alert today announcing that its students, staff, and faculty database has been hacked. Fortunately they had time to set up a website.

A sophisticated computer hacker has illegally and fraudulently accessed a restricted UCLA database containing names and certain personal information. This database includes UCLA’s current and some former students, faculty and staff, some student applicants and some parents of students or applicants who applied for financial aid. The database also includes current or former staff and faculty of the University of California, Merced, and current or former employees of the University of California Office of the President, for which UCLA does administrative processing.

UCLA is notifying all of those individuals in the database, even though a continuing investigation indicates that the computer trespasser sought and obtained only some of the information. There is no evidence to suggest that personal information has been misused.

UCLA greatly regrets the concern and inconvenience caused by this illegal activity.

This is exactly why I decided not to fill in all my alumni information after I graduated. No one uses those databases in a way that benefits me, and now lots of people could get screwed.

Despite most of my commenters lining up to defend Ameren UE, it looks like the experts agree with me: Ameren UE has a lot of explaining to do.

Missouri's top utility regulator put AmerenUE on notice Tuesday: Find a way to stop the mass power outages.

Missouri Public Service Commission Chairman Jeff Davis gave the utility 30 days to come up with a plan.

"The response that these things just happen — that's well and good — but that line only works once a decade," Davis said in an interview while en route to St. Louis to get a firsthand look at last week's storm damage.

The storm marked the fourth time in Davis' 2 1/2-year tenure as head of the PSC that hundreds of thousands of customers were left in the dark after a major storm. More than 83,000 Ameren customers in Missouri and Illinois still were without power as of 2:22 p.m. today.

While nothing can be done to completely storm-proof the local power grid, Davis said he's tired of answering questions from upset customers.

"We've got to get some answers to people, and we've got to get them now," Davis said. "I don't want to be back here six months from now with 500,000 customers out of power."

Hundreds of thousands of customers without power... four times in 2.5 years... if that's not incompetence then someone please explain what is. You can't just blame the weather every time you screw up. It's easy to keep the power going when nothing happens.

AmerenUE said last week's storm that left a thick coat of ice on trees, poles and power lines, prompting many to snap, is unprecedented in its 100-year history. The utility made the same argument when back-to-back thunderstorms left almost a million people without electric service in the bistate area in July — some for as long as nine days.

The most pathetic part of the story is the deflection by Ameren's spokeswoman.

"We understand the commission's frustration," Ameren spokeswoman Susan Gallagher said Tuesday. "We share that frustration. Everyone is looking for an easy answer. Everyone wants to make this better, but our priority is getting everyone back on."

Right, and after the power is back on they'll say something like, "We shouldn't be looking to place blame, we just need to work together to make sure it never happens again!"

Here are some responses to the comments in my earlier post about Ameren UE's incompetence.

To everyone who says that ice is nasty and the storm was big: Yes, that's why Ameren is charged with trimming the trees around their power lines. It's part of their job. If trees get icy and fall on the lines, that's Ameren's fault. Tree-trimming is supposed to be happening year-round, not just when there's warning of a coming storm.

To the defenders of the line men: I don't think anyone blames the line men for the power situation. The problem isn't that line men don't work hard enough, the problem is Ameren's handling of their responsibilities before the storm hit. Their policies are obviously flawed at a high level. I appreciate all the work the line men are doing in such a tough situation.

To people who say we don't know enough yet to make judgements: I don't need to know a lot about power generation and distribution to know that Ameren is failing in its most basic responsibility. It seems obvious to me what they should have done: trim the trees properly. Maybe that isn't the right answer, but regardless of how it's done the experts need to find a way to keep the power running through a fairly minor storm. It's their job to figure it out!

As for the political angle, it's generally safe to assume that politicians are guilty until proven innocent. Besides, they don't have to be guilty to be fired, they just have to be incompetent.

To those who suggest underground power lines: Underground utilities are one potential solution, but putting lines underground increases installation and maintenance costs by about 1000%. There is probably a cheaper solution.

If the power distribution market were competitive I would just say "too bad" -- you get what you pay for. However, considering that Ameren UE is the only game in town they don't face competition. If the problem is that electricity rates simply aren't high enough to prevent week-long outages, then I'd suspect that most people would agree that a rate increase would be useful. However, since the system is noncompetitive there's no way to know the best way to allocate resources. There's no alternate electric company to offer higher rates and higher reliability, so we're all stuck in the same boat.

Very simply put: Ameren UE is incompetent. For the second time in five months hundreds of thousands of St. Louis area residents are without power and Ameren is hoping to have them restored within days. Temperatures are predicted to be below freezing for the next week or so, and we're supposed to get more snow on Wednesday... just in time for power to go out again!

The storm two days ago wasn't mammoth... our area received about five inches of snow over the course of 36 hours. There weren't strong winds like in the July storm, and also unlike last time this storm was predicted for a week in advance. Gateway Pundit says that Ameren is claiming that this was the worst ice storm in St. Louis history, but they're hardly unbiased. Here's a map of the power outages... notice that the map is almost useless because it shows the number of customers without power in each region rather than the percentage of customers without power.

There is absolutely no excuse for Ameren UE to fail its customers during both the hottest and the coldest weeks of the year. I don't know any details, but I'm sure there's political corruption involved behind the appearance of industrial incompetence, and I want heads. Here's how it should work: first, we publically excoriate the management of Ameren UE; second, we indict the first politicians to jump on the bandwagon and call for investigations.

I'm glad I'm done with UCLA, because it's the eye of the sucky storm that's engulfing California. There's never been nearly enough parking at the campus -- not least because they keep tearing down student lots to build new offices for the professors -- but now Michael Dukakis is working his butt off to make the Westwood parking crunch worse than it already is.

The former Massachusetts governor has been at the center of a more than two-year battle against the longtime practice of "apron parking" in the neighborhood west of UCLA known as North Village. There, parked cars spill out of apartment driveways and straddle sidewalks and streets.

"It's a disaster," said Dukakis, who teaches public policy at UCLA and lives part-time in the neighborhood. "Beyond being illegal, it's dangerous. You get two SUVs with their rear ends sticking out into the street, and you end up with a one-way road. It's time to end it."

It's true that vehicles that hang out and block the street should be towed, but from my experience living near UCLA for four years they usually were. Blocking the streets has never been allowed, but the city has been lenient with cars who block the sidewalks because there just isn't anywhere else to stick a car.

Los Angeles city officials are now listening to Dukakis and the other critics of apron parking. As soon as January, parking enforcement officers will begin aggressively ticketing cars that partly block streets and sidewalks.

The campaign is expected to leave many residents scrambling for parking. There are only 857 legal curb spaces in North Village, but about 5,700 vehicles belonging to residents. The demand gets far worse when students commuting to UCLA comb the streets for parking spots.

Even finding an illegal spot in Westwood is a nightmare, but now it's going to get worse. Thanks Dukakis. Every time some failed leftist presidential candidate does something stupid I'm reminded of how disasterous their victory would have been for our country.

(HT: The Pirate.)