Ten great moments in Internet History.

1. 1969 – ARPANET is born.
2. 1978 – TCP/IP
3. June 23, 1983 – domain names.
4. December 25, 1990 – world wide web (web browser/web server)
5. March 15, 1993 – graphic browser (Mosaic).
6. 1990 – Search engines (Archie)
7. 1995 – 2001 Dot com boom.
8. 1998 – Blogs
9. 1996ish – Social media
10. 1995ish – E-commerce

(The “moments” get sort of vague after #6, in my opinion.)

The Associated Press has a story on flood buyouts along the Mississippi. The federal government will apparently provide around 75% of the money for owners of flood damaged properties to sell their property to their local municipality. The municipality that acquires the property is then obligated to demolish the property and not redevelop it, except for parks and the like.

My understanding is that this sort of buyout generally accompanies the flood insurance program. To be eligible for the federal flood insurance program, a municipality has to pass zoning laws prohibiting rebuilding when damage in a flood plain (or maybe a “floodway” – in any case, a designated area, likely to flood from time to time) exceeds 50% of the value of the structure. (I might be getting the particulars a little wrong here, but this is the general idea). The goal is to remove development from areas that are prone to flooding so that, in the long run, we don’t end up spending tons of money to rebuild again and again.

There has been some spirited discussion of third parties in another topic, so I thought I’d just give the subject its own post. Back in the day, I was a big fan of third parties — the Libertarian Party and Ross Perot’s Reform Party in particular.

Nowadays, at least on the federal level, the Bush Republicans have become so objectionable to me that I think third parties just tend to have perverse results – especially in Presidential politics. With the winner-take-all, state-by-state electoral vote method of choosing the President, we have a de facto two party system if not de jure. And so, the egotism of Ralph Nader ended up setting back the causes he purports to champion. It’s a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

Even in our two party system, however, third parties serve a necessary function in that they put pressure upon the two major parties to respond to issues they would otherwise ignore. I read somewhere recently that Eugene V. Debs and the Socialists never won more than a handful of offices, but most of their industrial platform was implemented under the New Deal anyway (limited work days, child labor laws, minimum wage laws, social security, etc.)

In my opinion, third parties would do best organizing at the grass roots level and challenging for local offices.

Ralph Pyle, a Richmond photographer, has made a DVD of 200 photographs he took of the Richmond explosion 40 years ago.

I love this so much it almost hurts. In a prank suspected of Sacha Baron Cohen:

Crowds in Arkansas came for the lure of cage fighting and $1 beer, but police say what they got instead was men ripping each others’ clothes off and kissing.
. . .
An elaborate array of mounted and handheld video cameras caught the crowd of 1,600’s reaction as the two men “went right up to the line” of the city’s morality laws, Holland said. The two men stripped down to their underwear, kissed and rubbed on each other, the sergeant said.

The audience, as well as local fighters drawn to take part in the show, became enraged. “It set the crowd off lobbing beers,” Holland said. “They had beers in plastic cups. Those things can get some distance on them actually.”
. . .
Those in attendance were told by several signs on display that they’d be filmed, Holland said, and signed waivers before the event. Convention center sales director Karin Hobbs declined to name the event’s sponsor Monday.

The jarring turn of narrative from what the audience expected to what it actually saw had to be surreal.

Poor mortgage lending practices have bagged their biggest bank to date with IndyMac having been seized by federal regulators.

IndyMac Bank, a prolific mortgage specialist that helped fuel the housing boom, was seized Friday by federal regulators, in the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

This is a particularly ticklish time for bank failure scandals for the GOP, I would think, with a Bush in the White House and McCain running to replace him. McCain, of course, has uncomfortable links to the Lincoln Savings failure which led to the Keating Five Scandal of which McCain was a part. George W. Bush’s brother, Neil Bush was director of the Silverado Savings and Loan when it failed. His father, George H.W. Bush was Vice President at the time. Neil was accused of giving himself a loan from Silverado and committed breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest. Silverado ultimately cost taxpayers $1.3 billion. (Neil ultimately paid $50,000 of that with the assistance of some Republican fund raisers.)

Normally that kind of stuff would be dimly remembered history. But, as they say, history doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. IndyMac boomed in the first part of this decade, as investors were willing to fund loans on ever-looser terms, then hit hard times when the housing market began to turn down in late 2006.

Some commentators want to blame IndyMac’s failure on Sen. Schumer’s decision to ask the Office of Thrift Supervision about the solvency of the bank. However, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

IndyMac had been troubled for months, and investors were concerned about its possible downfall well before Sen. Schumer’s comments. It specialized in Alt-A loans, a type of mortgage that can often be offered to borrowers who don’t fully document their incomes or assets. The company sold most of the loans it originated, but continued to hold some on its books. As defaults piled up, IndyMac’s finances deteriorated.

But, maybe if Sen. Schumer had just clapped louder, Tinkerbell IndyMac would still be alive. If a Senator’s letter of inquiry to a regulator is enough to topple otherwise sound financial institutions, that is profoundly disturbing. Otherwise, blaming Sen. Schumer for the failure is like playing some deranged version of Sink the Bismarck (“Whoever sinks it, drinks it!”).

Update
Good related post from HoosierDeb at South Shore Progressive. McCain economic adviser, Phil “It’s All in Your Head, You Whiner” Gramm, was one of the instrumental players in undermining the foundations that were designed to prevent collapses like IndyMac.

Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there.

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.

Not all anti-gay politicians are gay.

George W. Bush’s second best press secretary, Tony Snow, has died of cancer. I don’t think he was as good at stonewalling and patronizing the press as Ari Fleischer, but he was certainly better than McClellan and Perrino. Condolences to his family.