Tyler Holcomb

How to Help Iranian Protestors

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/30/09

 The incomparable Electronic Frontiers Foundation has a great web site explaining how you can directly help Iranian internet users: Set up a TOR Bridge or a TOR relay. If you understand what that means, go to the link RIGHT NOW and do your part to make the world a better place.  If you are unfamiliar with "TOR," here is the brief summary from EFF:   Tor (an acronym of "The Onion Router") is free and open... read more »

Does Beth Krom Have a Chance?

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/30/09

A major fundraising milestone looms for Beth Krom: she needs to raise $250,000 by the end of this month. Can she raise that much? and if she does, will it matter? As I explain in detail below, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)  is unlikely to consider Beth a serious contender unless she can also mobilize a new voting block. The standard way to assess a congressional seat's competitiveness is the Cook Partisan... read more »

Greenpeace opposes the Cap-and-Tax Abomination

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/26/09

 Greenepeace officially opposes  HR 2454, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill coming to a vote. This is good news for two reasons. First, this vote is going to be close, see I'll welcome any "nay" influence I can find.  Second, Greenpeace is opposing the bill because "undermines even those targets with massive offsets. The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and... read more »

C4L, Cap & Trade, and John Campbell

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/25/09

  Campaign for Liberty ("C4L") , the Ron Paul-inspired group, is doing great work opposing  the "cap and trade" abomination being forced through the Congres. Yesterday I got an email from C4L cogently arguing against "cap and trade" schemes, and especially the Markey-Waxman bill likely coming up for a vote.  Good.  But why was the  email entitled "Stop Cap-and-Trade -- Call... read more »

State yanks yet more money Irvine Schools

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/23/09

Sacramento wants to grab Irvine's "excess" property taxes, forcing the school board to cut another $7 million by June 30 in addition to  $11 million IUSD had already made as part of the forced switch to "basic aid"  (ie. relying solely on local property taxes.) The key cuts are deferring $2 million in new texbooks,  eliminating 25 teachers from the class size reduction program, cutting the GASB set... read more »

"This will be Good"

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/20/09

My neighbor Reza has extensive family in Shiraz.  After I saw the horrific youTube footage, I asked "Reza, how is your family in Shiraz?" He said, "I just got off the phone with them.  They are fine."  Then he smiled.  "This is good.  Something good will come from this." Every great people has moments when it rises above the flaws of its leaders.  The Persians, who invented the... read more »

The Revolution, by the Numbers

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/19/09

IranTracker.org has a fantastic post  with day-by-day figures for protest size, number of deaths, etc. The picture at the top of the page is a great story in itself. That Green rally is in Isfahan, 200 miles from Tehran.  The  reform movement is now nationwide. The graphs further down the page paint a clear picture: the security apparatus initially resonded with thuggery, but has backed off since Wednesday Saturday will be... read more »

See how your city wants to (ab)use stimulus money

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/09/09

Fiscal watchdog Francine Verbarg pointed me to stimulus watch, a great site to see how local officials are pursuing fiscal stimulus money. The site was started by a non-partisan group including academics at George Mason University ( home of the economics blog Marginal Revolution) to track requests for stimulus money. The site also allows the public to annotate, comment, and vote on these projects. For example, Irvine has requested four... read more »

Why the Great Park is Lawyering-up

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/08/09

As part of its fantastic coverage of the Great Park, Sean Emery of The OC Register posted Thursday Great Park tries to keep contamination info under wrap. Sean raised the concern that the Great Park Corporation is using expensive attorneys to manage the environmental impact review (EIR) so that sticky details of the toxic wasted management effort could be hidden behind "attorney-client" privilege. As it happens, I know a consultant... read more »

Irvine City Council Race Begins

By Tyler Holcomb | 06/04/09

The 2010 Irvine City Counciil race kicked-off last week when Beth Krom endorsed Shiva Farivar in a letter to supporters. Shiva is currently Beth's appointee to Irvine Community Services Commission and has been vice-president of the Iranian-American Democrats. She pulled papers in 2006, but did not appear on the ballot. She held her first fundraiser last Tuesday night at Caspian Restaurant. I haven't heard how that went, but if it had been a... read more »