Wednesday opinion, now with less snow but just as much wind. But there are still passengers stuck at NYC airports, perhaps through New Year's, and the West Coast will get hit again.
EJ Dionne:
In New Jersey, the interesting story is that Gov. Chris Christie and his lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, were both out of state. Worse, Christie's actual vacation location allowed Ben Smith of Politico to run his item under the headline: "Christie at Disney World." As Smith wrote: "Political lore holds that snow storms are iconic tests for executives, and one famously helped turn John Lindsay's mayoralty sour. So it is, at least, notable that Chris Christie didn't fly back from his Disney World vacation for this week's blizzard. He's thrived on the image of a take-charge executive; natural disasters are the sort of moment when an executive is supposed to take charge." Christie is now a big deal in national Republican politics, and the fact that Smith took notice of Christie's absence for his national audience of political junkies is significant.
EJ wrote this yesterday, and NBC covered the very same story last night. Barbara Morrill covered the opposite extreme in Cory Booker's blizzard good works.
Added: Christie's political snowpocalypse?
NY Times:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Tuesday that New York City was doing all it could to clear streets of snow and abandoned vehicles two days after being hit by a major blizzard. But while the city’s response to the storm has drawn withering criticism from residents who live outside Manhattan, Mr. Bloomberg said he did not know when all of the city’s streets might be plowed.
In my day they were "the OBs" (outer boroughs) and never got the attention Manhattan got from utility and sanitation. This is nothing new, though it might be new to Bloomberg.
Gene Robinson:
It was a "capitulation . . . of dramatic proportions," [Sen. Lindsay] Graham said in a radio interview last week. "I can understand the Democrats being afraid of the new Republicans. I can't understand Republicans being afraid of the new Republicans."
Oh, but there's reason to be very afraid.
I don't want to overstate the Republicans' predicament. They did, after all, take control of the House and win six more seats in the Senate. But during the lame-duck session, it seemed to dawn on GOP leaders that they begin the new Congress burdened with great expectations - but lacking commensurate power. It's going to be a challenge for Republicans just to maintain party unity, much less to enact the kind of conservative agenda they promised to their enthusiastic, impatient voters.
What? Responsibility and governance? What's that got to do with the tea party? they are already gunning for Scott Brown.
Ezra Klein:
That Obama would think it important that an NFL team made a major statement about the employability of ex-convicts makes sense. That he'd want to take a risk and throw his weight behind the decision by making that call is admirable. But for the White House to now say that the call was really about energy efficiency in stadium design both makes Obama look a bit Carteresque -- does he really have time to be worrying about the energy efficiency of football stadiums? -- and blunts whatever impact the call itself could have had. That was a call either worth making or not worth making, but it definitely wasn't worth making if the president wasn't willing to stand behind it.
Update: On Twitter, Ana Marie Cox notesthat all commentary on this question should link to the "Second Chances Act," and she's right.
WaPo: Hey, how's your bank doing?
Amid high unemployment, a struggling economy, and a still devastated real estate market, the nation is closing out the year with 157 bank failures, up from 140 in 2009. As recently as 2006, before the bubble burst, there were none.
Now, there are more on the horizon.
From the long term Eating Patterns in America study:
"In the long run," he says, "the top three foods we ordered in 1978, when I first started -- were (in order) carbonated soft drinks, french fries and hamburgers.
"And yesterday, the top three foods we ordered at restaurants were carbonated soft drinks, hamburgers and french fries. ... We've changed so much!" he joked.
it's not just a guess. That's what we eat.
NY Times on the environment:
Last week, in a very welcome move, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reversed the Norton/Leavitt agreement on the Utah lands while reaffirming his department’s right to preserve other public lands in their natural state for future generations.
Wilderness areas receive the highest protection — no development, no motorized use, no resource extraction. Right now about 110 million acres are so protected, and only Congress can add new areas. But designating lands as "wilderness study areas" — as the Utah lands would have been before the 2003 deal — gives them provisional protections until Congress has a chance to act.
The question now — and it’s a big one — is whether the bureau will exercise its restored authority
Michael P. McDonald on AZ and the census:
The federal government uses these population counts to distribute federal dollars to the states. According to Andrew Reamer at the Brookings Institution, in 2008 the federal government distributed $866.5 billion in funds to the states based on the census population counts. Your state gets its share of the federal pie based on the number of people that are counted by the census. If there were $866.5 billion in funds to disperse in 2010, each person would be worth $2,807 in federal money to your state.
Note that I say "people" not "citizens." This is where Arizona may have lost as much as three-quarters of a billion dollars annually in federal funding. The Arizona state government could have easily put this money to good use, as according to the New York Times, the state faced a $2.6 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2011.