Whipped Cream Difficulties

Okay, technically, the Chinese government has actually extended the lease on the National Zoo’s pandas while they try to work out a new deal. But did you know that there was a lease, and it had expired?

China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos.

There’s something odd about that.

Blogging this also gives me a chance to bring up the odd conversation I had with my brother a few weeks ago; for some reason, he really seems to hate the giant panda. Part of his anti-panda rant included the statement that “any animal that can’t breed without assistance deserves to become extinct”. Which actually makes some sense, but the venom with which he delivered this was striking; the only other thing I can think of that he hates that much is seafood.

I’m sure TJIC will have a lot more to say about this story, (Edited to add: Ha! Told you so!) but there was one thing in the NYT article about Prichard, Alabama that jumped out at me.

Basically, the city’s pension plan has run out of money, so they’ve just simply stopped paying people. And because this is a municipal government, they aren’t subject to the same laws that private plans are: there’s no PBGC coverage, for example. (It does seem that it is illegal for the city to just decide to stop sending checks, but it is unclear from the NYT article what anyone is planning to do about it.)

Anyway, much like the LAT coverage of Maywood, the NYT spends a good bit of space tugging at the heartstrings, and glosses over some significant facts. The first small warning flag pops up in paragraph five: “The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual — the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice”

But the flares don’t go off until paragraph 18:

The city had already taken the unusual step of reducing pension benefits by 8.5 percent for current retirees, after it declared bankruptcy in 1999, yielding to years of dwindling money, mismanagement and corruption. (A previous mayor was removed from office and found guilty of neglect of duty.)

Yeah, municipal pensions are a ticking time bomb. But wouldn’t the NYT have been better served by profiling a city without a history of mismanagement and corruption?