Category Archives: Economics

Rep. Ballentine gets to bottom of subprime mess

On today’s page we ran an excerpt from a blog post by Nathan Ballentine, in which he said:

To
put this into an analogy at my paying job at Wachovia Mortgage … if I
inadvertently told an applicant he was approved but later learned that
was a mistake due to a certain part of his application being graded
incorrectly, would I just explain that mistake to that borrower (yes)
or would I then go throw out that section of the application for
EVERYONE that applied that month and let them get a mortgage they
otherwise would not?

Isn’t that how we got into this whole mess with our economy? Some wizards on Wall Street, overthrowing centuries of common business sense, deciding to back loans to lots and lots of people who demonstrably were unable to pay them back?

Or am I missing something? When it comes to business matters, that’s highly possible, because very little of it makes sense to me.

When party is set aside, things get done

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Back on this post, Mike Cakora said there were things we could do to get the economy back on track, but there was a catch:

…it could be that one party develops a comprehensive approach to taxes,
healthcare, energy, and the other stuff that ails us. I know you won’t
like this, but it’s going to take a party to do so because any
comprehensive fix will involve leadership, discipline, and limited
horse-trading to deal with the special-interest harpies.

Actually, Mike, it doesn’t take a party to act in time of crisis. It takes the opposite; it takes willingness to cast partisan considerations aside. Conveniently, there’s an object lesson of this atop today’s front page in The Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON — On Jan. 17, Washington’s mad dash to finalize an economic-stimulus plan ran into a wall.

On an afternoon conference call, the two top Democrats
in Congress warned President Bush against going public with his own
plan. "People will have to come out and criticize it if you put out a
plan," Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said, according to
people familiar with the matter. "It will look like you’re trying to
jam us on this." Mr. Bush said he’d think it over.

Democrats left the call fuming. Some discussed rushing
out their own plan to avoid being upstaged. The effort by both sides to
keep their partisan instincts under wraps was coming unraveled. Ten
minutes later, the president averted a clash by instructing his
Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, to call Capitol Hill leaders and say
the White House would keep mum on the details of its plan.

A week later, congressional leaders and the White House announced their
boldest attempt yet to address the economic uncertainty that some fear
could lead to the deepest U.S. downturn in decades.

Mind you, I’m not saying this stimulus plan is necessarily the right action. But having slept through Ben Stein’s class, I can’t say I know what the right action is. Considering I have to trust other folks to be smart for me on this, I am WAY more likely to trust a bipartisan consensus action than a partisan one. Yes, that could mean a plan too watered down to do any good even if it moves in the right direction. Right now, I prefer the conservative (and no, folks, I don’t mean politically conservative in the popular sense; I’m using the word in a plain English manner) approach. I guess for the time being I’m trusting Brooks’ ecology to set the balance right.

Of course, when we get to the bread lines, I might be calling for a New Deal.

But in the meantime, we need Dems and Repubs to act like grownups and think about the good of the nation for a change, instead of scoring points on each other in the nauseating game that they usually play. And Sen. Reid, your people would not "have to come out and criticize," nor would the president’s people "have to" do likewise, no matter how compelling your visceral compulsion may seem.

To the contrary, you all have an obligation to the country not to go into knee-jerk partisan fulmination mode, particularly in a time of crisis. Thank you, Sen. Reid and President Bush, for realizing that and managing to overcome that impulse and act appropriately, even if you did it only out of electoral fear of those of us who are sick and tired of your default modes, and even if it’s only for this one brief moment.

2008: The good news, the bad news

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David Brooks leads his latest column this way:

There is roughly a 100 percent chance that we’re going to spend much of this year talking about the subprime mortgage crisis, the financial markets and the worsening economy. The only question is which narrative is going to prevail, the Greed Narrative or the Ecology Narrative.

And this got me to thinking: 2008 has the potential to be a very good year politically. I might, for the first time in my adult life, have a choice in November between two presidential candidates I actually feel good about. Sure, a lot of obstacles have to be overcome. Obama might not get enough bounce from South Carolina to roll over Hillary Clinton on super-duper-pooper day. John McCain could still slip in Florida on account of the very quality that makes him viable in the fall. (Party orthodoxy types, from Don Fowler to Jim DeMint, can’t stand the thought of nominating anybody that swing voters might actually want to vote for in a general election.)

But still, there’s a very good chance that this could be the best year ever for the UnParty.

But then comes David Brooks raining on my parade. And I don’t mean the Greed Narrative vs. Ecology Narrative. Both are are excruciatingly boring. No, the bad news is that when he says "there is roughly a 100 percent chance that we’re going to spend much of
this year talking about the subprime mortgage crisis, the financial
markets and the worsening economy," I’m afraid he’s right. And this fills me with horror. It would mean a year of reading columns like this one. I normally enjoy Brooks columns, but this one was mind-numbingly boring, and stupid. Really, tell me — what the hell is the difference between the "Greed Narrative" and the "Ecology Narrative?" Doesn’t the ecology one assume greed? ("Everyone seeks wealth while minimizing risk.")

What if I get two candidates I can get excited about — not just one, which would in itself be an embarrassment of riches going by recent years, but two, a no-lose proposition — but they spend all their time talking about … what did he say? Oh, yeah: "complex financial instruments, like globally securitized subprime mortgages."

I get mad just thinking about it. Wall Street is a con game, folks. Take the equities markets (you see? they’ve already got me saying stuff like "equities"! and I probably used it wrong!) — analysts con people into overvaluing dot-coms, or undervaluing newspapers, with little regard for reality. And other people have to live and die by the foolish investments made or unmade as a result.

And then there are the folks at the big brokerage houses that invent "products," from which they make billions, when they never produced a damn’ thing. They’ve added value to nothing.

I’m not crazy about having a mortgage to begin with, but if I do make a deal like that with somebody, I Goofy_beard_005
want to deal with that same somebody for the full 30 years (or 15, if you refinanced a while back the way I did). It should be like the nearest financial thing to a sacrament. What kind of sense does it make for mortgages to be gathered up like soybeans and bought and sold in bulk… Can you believe I said "in bulk?" A mortgage has no bulk! It’s an abstract concept! Like money! When your mortgage gets sold, you have to think, it’s not bad enough that I’ve indentured myself to this institution that made me the loan for the rest of my useful life, but now I’m being sold down the river!

If they’re gonna talk about this stuff, I’m liable to haul off and start talking like John Edwards, and that would not be pretty! So back off with the money talk!

Can’t we talk about war, or health care, or something I care about? Please. If I had wanted to talk about markets and such, I would have voted for Steve Forbes. Or Pierre "Pete" DuPont. Or Mitt Romney. Or Ben Stein. Same diff.

Anyone? Anyone?

She’s back, at least for a moment

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Apparently, speculation that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be in the state any more was overblown, as her campaign advises:

Hillary Clinton to Deliver Major Speech TOMORROW in South Carolina Addressing the Serious Economic Challenges Facing America

Thursday, January 24
Greenville, SC

11:00 a.m. EST
Clinton Delivers Major Speech Addressing the Serious Economic Challenges Facing America
Furman University
Younts Conference Center
3300 Pointsett Highway
Greenville, SC 29613
OPEN PRESS
Additional Details TBA

Not that I’m trying to give advice, but every moment she does spend in the state between now and Saturday night reduces the viability of the "I didn’t really try in South Carolina" explanation for a big loss, should things come to that.

A bit of perspective on our place in the world, by the numbers

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Energy Party consultant Samuel sent me this, which figures. Samuel is the guy who came up with the idea for the endowed chairs program, which bore impressive fruit yet again this week. He’s still the most enthusiastic cheerleader of that program, even after our governor replaced him on the panel that oversees it:

This video — really, sort of a powerpoint presentation, only on YouTube, is worth watching. There are some figures in it that I find suspect (I’m always that way with attempts to quantify the unknowable, which in this case applies to prediction about the future), but others that are essentially beyond reproach, and ought to make us think.

What they ought to make us think is this: So much of what we base the selection of our next president on — party affiliation, ideological purity, our respective preferences on various cultural attitudes — is wildly irrelevant to the challenges of the world in which this person will attempt to be the leader of the planet’s foremost nation. Foremost nation for now, that is. If we don’t start thinking a lot more pragmatically, it won’t be for long.

Can anyone (any viable candidate, that is) say ‘single-payer?’: Column version

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
CAN ANYONE among those with a chance of becoming president say “single-payer?” If not, forget about serious reform of the way we pay for health care.
It doesn’t even necessarily have to be “single-payer.” Any other words will do, as long as the plan they describe is equally bold, practical, understandable, and goes as far in uprooting our current impractical, wasteful and insanely complex “system.”
And the operative word is “bold.” Why? Because unless we start the conversation there, all we might hope for is that a few more of the one out of seven Americans who don’t have insurance will be in the “system” with the rest of us — if that, after the inevitable watering-down by Congress. And that’s not “reform.” Actual reform would rescue all of us from a “system” that neither American workers nor American employers can afford to keep propping up.
But the operative word to describe the health care plans put forward by the major, viable candidates is “timid.”
“Single-payer” is definitely not that — at least, not within an American context. Seen from the perspective of most advanced nations — which accept medical care as just another part of a nation’s infrastructure, like roads and post offices — it’s no big deal.
Not here, though — not by a long shot. Here, we have too many people preprogrammed to go ballistic at the mention of “single-payer.” That’s because of the identity of that payer.
It’s… well, it’s the government!
This column will now take a short break while libertarians run around shrieking until they turn blue and fall over… da-da-dum-dum, hmmm… readers might want to go look at the Sunday comics until we resume… da-dee-da-dahhh… Still screaming, so let’s get another cup of coffee… Ah, that’s good stuff…
OK, we’re back, and they’re still screaming, but we’ll just have to accept that they’re going to do that, and proceed.
“Government,” in America, is a word that we use for a free people banding together to do something that we can do far better working together than working separately. Some people don’t accept that fact. They seem to believe that “government” is some scary thing that intrudes on their lives from out there somewhere, like a spaceship full of aliens with ray guns that will turn us all into toads or something.
Those people are one of the two big reasons why you don’t hear any presidential candidates saying “single-payer” except Dennis Kucinich. You may recall recent reports that Mr. Kucinich had a close encounter with a UFO, and it was a positive experience, so I guess he’s just not scared of the aliens any more.
But the major candidates are. Or rather, they’re scared of being labeled as extremists. Also, they don’t want to offend the health insurance companies whose reason for being would disappear under “single-payer.”
Last week, I got a press release from a labor union that complained “that no Republican candidate has a plan to ensure all Americans have access to health care.” That’s true. But the union, which represents blue- and pink-collar workers in health care, was missing the fact that the leading Democrats are little better.
“Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been engaged in a bitter back-and-forth over whose health plan covers more people,” The Wall Street Journal reported last week. “Former Sen. John Edwards has jumped in, saying his plan is the best of all.”
But what they’re fighting over are plans that would pull varying numbers of the uninsured into the same overly expensive, wasteful, maddening system of private health insurance that the rest of us are caught in. Conveniently, they say their plans would be paid for by repealing the “Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.”
Maybe you could pay for a health plan that way — as long as it doesn’t provide real reform.
Make no mistake: A single-payer national health plan would cost a lot of money, and you would pay for it in new taxes. The good news is that most of us would probably still pay less than we currently pay in premiums.
According to the Web site of Physicians for a National Health Program, which promotes single-payer, “This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”
But when not even touchy-feely liberal Democrats have the guts to say it’s worth paying a new tax to make health care affordable for all, even when that’s the hottest domestic issue among voters (which would not be the case if the insured majority were happy), we’re in trouble.
Little wonder that Dow Jones’ MarketWatch reported last week that “Those who hope the 2008 presidential election will finally bring about drastic health-care reform may well end up finding it’s a case of politics and business as usual, experts say.” The same article noted that Hillary Clinton has received $1.8 million in contributions from accident and health insurers, followed by Barack Obama with $1.45 million, Mitt Romney with $1.09 million and Rudy Giuliani with $1.08 million.
That, by the way, is money that you and I and the guy down the street paid for health care that didn’t go to health care.
Given the odds against substantive reform — betw
een the government haters, the insurance industry and Big Pharma, all of whom have a demonstrated willingness to outlast the rest of us in any protracted political fight — the only way we’re going to see significant change is if a president is elected with a mandate for bold reform. Only a president is elected by the whole nation, so only a president would ever have that kind of juice.
Unfortunately, as previously noted, none of the viable candidates will say “single-payer.”
But I will: Single-payer. Single-payer, single-payer! Now, do you have anything better to say?

Zyrtec update

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Here’s an interesting twist on my Sunday column. As you’ll recall, I mentioned that my current group insurance has in recent years refused to cover Zyrtec, which I found to be effective in treating my allergies. So I got this message from Zyrtec’s PR firm:

Hi
Brad,

My name is Eric Tatro, and I’m with
Cohn & Wolfe public relations. Today I read your editorial about health
insurance that was posted on your blog, and noticed that you had some trouble
getting your insurance company to pay for prescription Zyrtec.

We are working with McNeil Consumer
Healthcare, who recently announced that the FDA approved Zyrtec and Zyrtec-D 12
Hour (which combines Zyrtec with a decongestant) for use without a prescription.
I thought you and your readers might find this interesting, since allergy
sufferers will soon be able to purchase Zyrtec anywhere over-the-counter
prescriptions are sold without first having to visit an allergist or health care
professional. Also, for many allergy sufferers, Zyrtec will cost up to one-third
less than prescription Zyrtec. Both medications will be available nationwide in
January 2008.

If you would like more information,
you can find a full press kit located at http://www.ZyrtecPressKit.com. The FDA
also issued a press release on the approval, which can be found at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01750.html.
Of course, please let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any
other way.

Sincere
thanks,

-Eric

I immediately wrote back to Eric as follows:

Thanks.
Actually, I heard that last week, but it didn’t affect my column, since it
didn’t affect the fact that up to now, my insurance has refused to pay for
Zyrtec, and HAS paid for allergy shots, which was the point I was
making.

Here’s an
irony for you, though: I had already learned that my NEW insurance (that for
which I’ll be paying $274.42 every two weeks) WILL pay for a Zyrtec
prescription. Now that it’s going over-the-counter, they might NOT cover the
prescription — I’ll have to check, but that’s my strong
suspicion.

So if Zyrtec
is available to me only over the counter, and the price is only 30 percent less
than the amount that was so high my current insurance refused to pay (which had
to be really high, when you consider that they DID cover something that had a
co-pay — which would be no more than 50 percent of the total — of $81.95),
then I still won’t be able to afford it. With my high premiums, I will be very
much boxed into whatever my insurance will cover.

The only
thing that might help me would be if a generic version came available. But from
what you’re telling me, this is one of those situations where the drug goes OTC,
but doesn’t go generic — at least, not yet. Am I right about that? I hope not,
but the fact that the company considers it cost-effective to hire a PR firm to
promote the brand seems to indicate that I’m right.
Do you have
any idea of when the drug might be available in generic form? It would be very
helpful to know that.

I’ll let you know what he says back. I’ve also made a note to myself to find out at first opportunity whether I’m right about the insurance not helping if it goes OTC, but not generic. Finally, I’ve got a call in to the FDA to ask when Zyrtec will go generic. I realize those of you who don’t need Zyrtec might not care about this in the narrowest sense, but I believe this situation is what English majors (or sociologists or economists or somebody) call a microcosm. Anyway, I’ll be back to you as the plot sickens…

The elves are restless

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On Thanksgiving, after the turkey, I accompanied my family — or the portion able to join us to visit my youngest up in Pennsylvania — to see "Fred Claus." (Vince Vaughan cracks me up, OK?) Anyway, we enjoyed it for the light entertainment it was.

The next day, we bopped up to NYC because my youngest had never been there. Yes, we visited the shopping capital of the world on the busiest shopping day of the year. We weren’t buying; looking was overwhelming enough. And it turns out that, while "Fred Claus" exposed certain problems with Santa’s toy production process, it failed to reflect the deep unrest among some of the elves — or at least, the elves we found on the sidewalk outside Macy’s. (Like an explorer drawn into the heart of darkness, I couldn’t resist leading the kids that way in awe and fascination, after we got off the New Jersey Transit train across the street at Penn Station.)

They were very angry — and unexpectedly tall, I found. Maybe they were Middle Earth elves, rather than the kind from the North Pole. In any case, they didn’t seem to have the ol’ Santa spirit.

In case you went shopping on Friday and think it was hectic, I share with you this video, which still doesn’t quite show what it was really like to be in that bedlam. As one of my daughters said looking over my shoulder at the portion of the video inside Macy’s (the part right after the angry elves), "You had to be there." A very different scene from during the parade the day before, but just about as crowded.

I really spoiled the hectic effect by throwing in some restful parts — the skaters at Rockefeller Center, for instance — because I’m a big believer in giving The Full Picture.

Pictures of the poor are always with us

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Poor5

What’s the opposite of an embarrassment of riches? Well, that’s what I’ve got.

Today, I’m filling in for the absent Mike Fitts, and one of the things he normally does is pick columns and art for the op-ed page — in addition to composing, outputting and releasing that page to the platemakers downstairs.

Anyway, I’ve chosen a syndicated column for tomorrow — it’s a Robert J. Samuelson column, for Wednesday release, on the persistent economic forces that keep, and will quite likely continue to keep, the poorest part of the world lagging behind the affluent parts.

Needing art (journalese for photos, cartoons, graphics — pretty much anything beyond text) for the page, I wondered whether I might find something on the wire that would go with the Samuelson piece.

Boy, could I.

This is partly because photojournalists the world over are drawn to images of poverty — under such circumstances, a picture is worth far more than its usual allotment of 1,000 words. But it’s also because, once you get outside this country and Western Europe, there’s so much of it out there.

Here are just five of the many I had to choose from today. So you be the editor: Which do you think best complements the Samuelson piece, based on my sketchy description above?
Poor1_2

Poor2_2

Poor3_2
Poor4_2

Up where that ol’ demon lives

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A reader, apparently doubting the Energy Party axiom that sharply increasing the price of gasoline via a tax increase would lower consumption, defund our enemies, clean our air, prevent catastrophic climate change and help the Cubs win the World Series, raised this point on my last post:

Hasn’t the price of gas gone up about $1 over the past 2-3 years?
People were saying in 2005 that a $1 increase in the gas tax would
reduce consumption. Did it?

Posted by: Gary | Oct 9, 2007 1:39:59 PM

Yes, it did (go up a dollar) and no it didn’t (depress demand). But I believe that’s because the price was so low to start with — near historic lows, adjusted for inflation.

I’m sort of reminded of one of my favorite books and movies, "The Right Stuff." The filmmakers had the brilliant stroke of having Levon Helm narrate the film, enabling him to say such things as (and you have to hear it in that gravelly Arkansas accent):

There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged
him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would
buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1
on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air
could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through
which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound
barrier.

Well, as it turned out that, to paraphrase Sam Shepard as Yeager, the damned thing didn’t even exist. At least, it didn’t exist in the sense of being something that would rip your ears off if you tried to go through it. So test pilots kept pushing the limit back. When Scott Crossfield actually passed Mach 2, Jack Ridley (also portrayed by Levon Helm), assures Yeager et al. that there are still frontiers to be challenged:

The real test wasn’t Mach 2. That demon lives at about 2.3 on your machmeter.

So it is that I find myself saying that ol’ demon that’ll kill the SUV wasn’t really to be found at $3 a gallon. That demon lives more at about $4 or $5 on your gas pump.

Kidding aside, I think an immediate, all-at-once increase of a dollar or even two — something that can only be achieved with a tax increase — would have a shock effect that gradual increase would not. The debate leading up to such an increase would be filled with such emotion, such doomsday moaning and crying, that when it actually happened, it would have a tremendous psychological effect.

Admittedly, that effect might wear off if that was then the permanent price, as others have suggested and I have endorsed. But even if consumption crept back up, less of the money would be going to the petrodictators, and more would be going into paying for research for ways to become independent of those sources for good.

Mercury

The end of the Wal-Mart era?

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Whoa. I don’t even have anything in particular to say about this right now, but it seems that the tectonic plates have shifted beneath us, and I thought I’d bring it to y’all’s attention:

Wal-Mart Era Wanes…
By GARY MCWILLIAMS
October 3, 2007; Page A1
The Wal-Mart Era, the retailer’s time of overwhelming business and social influence in America, is drawing to a close.
Using a combination of low prices and relentless expansion, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. emerged from rural Arkansas in the 1970s to reshape the world’s largest economy. Its co-founder, Sam Walton, taught Americans to demand ever-lower prices and instructed businesses on running a lean company. His company helped boost America’s overall productivity, lowered the inflation rate, and strengthened the buying power for millions of people. Over time, it also accelerated the drive to manufacture products in Asia, drove countless small shops out of business, and sped the decline of Main Street. Those changes are permanent.
Today, though, Wal-Mart’s influence over the retail universe is slipping….
Rival retailers lured Americans away from Wal-Mart’s low-price promise by offering greater convenience, more selection, higher quality, or better service….
… American shoppers are increasingly looking for qualities that Wal-Mart has trouble providing. "For the first time in a long time, quality has a chance to gain on price," says Lee Peterson, a vice president at Dublin, Ohio-based brand consulting firm WD Partners Inc….

Quality? What kind of gimmick will these ad wizards come up with next?

Be sure to check out the short video showing graphically how Wal-Mart took over the country. It’s cool.

What happens after you get rid of the illegal immigrants?

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Someone — OK, a Graham staffer — brought this to my attention this morning:

September 26, 2007
Towns Rethink Laws Against Illegal Immigrants
By KEN BELSON and JILL P. CAPUZZO
RIVERSIDE, N.J., Sept. 25 — A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.
Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.
The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.
With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.
Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.
So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer…

That’s sort of a two-edged story, really. It supports my, and Sen. Graham‘s position, by suggesting that our economy would suffer if you just boot the illegals out. But part of the problem is manufactured by the ACLU. And I don’t believe you should avoid a certain policy position because somebody might sue you; to me that’s a poor argument.

As to the merits of the lawsuits — well, I don’t know, because the story doesn’t address WHY they have succeeded in court. I don’t know the grounds.

Mike McCurry for the ONE Campaign

District 5: Good schools equal high property value

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Sorry, Doug, but I have to dig back into my video to rebut something you said in a comment back here:

It was the school board member/real estate agent in the video who
talked about lake real estate (including his own) appreciating. The
appreciation has nothing to do with the quality of schools… it has to
do with the limited supply of lake property.

There’s no way for you to know this, but in editing my hour or so of video down to less than five minutes to fit it on YouTube, I left out this elaboration by Jerry Fowler:

Clearly, he believes — as do most Realtors, from what I’ve seen — that there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between good schools and rising property values.

But don’t think Katon’s gone soft on Dems

Out with the UnParty, in with ENERGY!

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Nobody’s proposing a comprehensive energy plan, so I guess we’ll have to do it ourselves.

I’ve had this idea percolating lately that I wanted to develop fully before tossing it out. Maybe do a column on it first, roll it out on a Sunday with lots of fanfare. But hey, the situation calls for action, not hoopla.

So here’s the idea (we’ll refine is as we go along):

Reinvent the Unparty as the Energy Party. Not the Green Party — it’s not just about the environment — but a serious energy party. Go all the way, get real, make like we actually know there’s a war going on. Do the stuff that neither the GOP nor the Dems would ever do:

Jack up CAFE standards.
Put about a $2 per gallon tax on gasoline.
Spend the tax proceeds on a Manhattan project on clean, alternative energy (hydrogen, bio, wind, whatever), and on public transportation (especially light rail).
Reduce speed limits everywhere to no more than 55 mph. (This must be credited to Samuel Tenenbaum, who bent my ear about it yet again this morning, and apparently does the same to every presidential wannabe who calls his house looking for him or Inez).
ENFORCE the damn’ speed limits. If states say they can’t, give them the resources out of the gas tax money.
Build nuclear power plants as fast as we can (safely, of course).
Either ban SUVs for everyone who can’t demonstrate a life-or-death need to drive one, or tax them at 100 percent of the sales price and throw THAT into the win-the-war kitty.
If we go the tax route on SUVs (rather than banning), launch a huge propaganda campaign along the lines of "Loose Lips Sink Ships" (for instance, "Hummers are Osama’s Panzer Corps"). Make wasting fuel the next smoking or DUI — absolutely socially unacceptable.
Because it will be a few years before we can be completely free of petrol, drill the ever-lovin’ slush out of the ANWR, explore for oil off Myrtle Beach, and build refinery capacity — all for a limited time of 20 years. Put the limit in the Constitution.

You get the idea. Respect no one’s sacred cows, left or right; go all-out to win the war and, in the long run, save the Earth. Pretty soon, tyrants from Tehran to Moscow to Caracas will be tumbling down without our saying so much as "boo" to them, and global warming will slow within our lifetimes.

THEN, once we’ve done all that, we can start insisting upon some common sense on entitlements, and health care. Change the name to the Pragmatic Party then. Whatever works, whatever is practical, whatever solves our problems — no matter whose ox gets gored. Leave the ideologues in the dust, while we solve the problems.

How’s that sound? Can any of y’all get behind that?

Put Your Strasse in Your Tasse

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Sorry about the bad use of German, but I’m not as good as Emile at slogans. I got this internal e-mail from a fellow employee at The State today:

Guys —
I apologize for the global, but if you need some inexpensive Christmas gifts, my daughter’s school (collective groan) is selling Columbia’s Iron Brew Coffee, which was voted by Food and Wine magazine as the #7 roaster in the country, and the #1 roaster in South Carolina.
The price is $8.50 for a 12-ounce bag of ground coffee — due at time of order. Plain or a variety of flavors, including French vanilla, holiday spice and Southern pecan. I need to turn in the order by Nov. 13.
No more emails, I promise. Just drop by my desk if you’re interested.

Anyway, it made me think of Emile’s campaign (and congrats to Emile, by the way, for getting the Charleston paper’s endorsement), and I tried to think of how he might promote drinking local coffee — or at least, locally marketed coffee. I realize it’s not quite the same, but I found myself reaching for inspiration anyway.

I didn’t arrive. "Put your (blank) in your cup?" "…your mug? … your demitasse?

Hey, forgive me for the digression, but any message that’s headlined "Need some coffee?" grabs my attention and won’t let go.

A state of one

51 Replies

At first, I thought Tommy Moore was expressing a difference of opinion between himself and John Edwards. But then, I find that Mr. Edwards apparently doesn’t go around talking about "Two Americas" any more, but approaches the same theme from a different, more positive, more forward-looking angle. Well, good for him. Good for both of them, I suppose. I never liked Mr. Edwards’ former shtick.

Yes, we write frequently about the "Two South Carolinas," but we define that term very differently. We talk about the profound economic differences that exist between urban and rural, black and white, I-85 vs. I-95, and so forth. Most folks do fine in our state, but we are held back as a people by the large swathes of poverty. Our goal in using such rhetoric — and we’ll be doing so again Sunday — is to get the affluent interested in policies that will help the less fortunate.

When John Edwards talked about "Two Americas" in the 2004 campaign, he meant a few super-rich folks (such as himself) on one side, and the vast majority of Americans on the other. It was about stirring up the resentment of the middle class, and getting it to vote for him. Very different idea, leading to a very different intended result.

Bubble, bubble, don’t talk trouble

56 Replies

Jimmy Derrick, president/owner of Century 21 Bob Capes Realtors (that’s a mouthful of a name, which you would think one might have trouble saying over and over, but Jimmy manages it very well) had Health and Happiness duty today at Columbia Rotary.

For you nonRotarians out there, that’s when some poor sap has to stand up before the 300-some members of the club and a) talk about the health of members and their loved ones and b) be funny. I know all about it, because about once a quarter, that poor sap is me (so any clean jokes you know would be appreciated).

Anyway, Jimmy used part of his time to talk about the health of his industry. "Is there a bubble in real estate?" he and his folks are asked constantly. He coaches Realtors to respond, "Thank you, but that’s not part of my vision."

Some of the bad-news-seekers get more specific, asking whether developers haven’t gotten a little carried away and saturated the market for condos near Williams-Brice Stadium. "All I know is," said Jimmy, "they’re selling like crazy."

The real estate business in his part of the world — the South, a little bit inland from the coast — is very good, he said. "If you want to say anything negative, don’t talk to me."

That might sound like salesman bravado, whistling past a graveyard, etc. But actually is seems like a good, practical response to news of bubbles popping (or at least, deflating). The "pop" isn’t anything physical; it’s about mass psychology. If everyone agrees that property in the Midlands is retaining value and appreciating, it will continue to do so. They may be panicking up north and along the coast, and therefore driving their prices down further, but why should we? I don’t see any advantage in it. I don’t how anyone who owns a home (or, like most of us, a mortgage) would.

I can sort of understand why doubters would dismiss my protestations that the newspaper industry is healthier than Wall Street thinks it is. I have a stake in it, so they take what I say with a grain of salt. But most of us have a stake — a pretty big one — in property retaining its value.

So keep thinking lovely thoughts, people. You’ll thank yourself when you go to sell your house.

What’s all this then about immigration?

308 Replies

It’s not what you think; this was shot in New Jersey.

Greatest threat to U.S.
is immigration? Since when?

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor

WITH CONGRESS on break, U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett has been meeting with his 3rd District constituents. So what’s on their minds?
“Immigration” comes in first.
Second, he says, is “immigration.” Third is immigration. It’s also fourth.
And he supposed that “the war” maybe came in fifth. I’m sure our troops over there will appreciate making the Top Ten.
He admitted that he was being “a little facetious.” The war is “a cloud” casting its shadow over everything political. But there are no clouds on the stark immigration landscape. There, you’ll find nothing but a blinding, hot interrogation lamp surrounded by shadows. If you give the wrong answer, there are a lot of GOP voters out there ready to cast you into the everlasting darkness.
“Wrong,” of course, can vary, depending on whether you’re a lobbyist for the big business types who have been the GOP’s bread and butter for generations, or one of the salt-of-the-earth folk who crowded into the Big Tent in recent decades and created the vaunted GOP majority.
The main question I have on the subject is one that neither Rep. Barrett nor anyone else has answered to my satisfaction:
How did this issue become such a big deal all of a sudden? What changed? We’ve had Mexican tiendas in our neighborhoods, even in South Carolina, for much of the past decade. For even longer, it’s been hard to communicate on a construction site without a working knowledge of Spanish. Our last two presidents could hardly put together a Cabinet for all the illegals their nominees had employed as nannies.
Over the last 10 or 20 years, there’s been a huge influx. But what changed in the past 12 or 15 Sombrero months? As near as I can tell, looking at the real world out there, nothing. But in the unreal world of politics, it’s as though, sometime during the summer of 2005 or so, a huge portion of the electorate suddenly woke up from a Rip Van Winkle catnap and said: “Whoa! Why are all these people speaking Spanish?”
There were always a few who considered illegal immigration Issue One. On the left, you had union types concerned about cheap labor depressing wages and working conditions. On the right, you had culture warriors furious at hearing anything other than English spoken in the U.S. of A.
On both sides, drifting amid the high-sounding words about fairness and the rule of law, there was a disturbing whiff of 19th century Know-Nothingism.
I had one or two people who e-mailed me about it regularly, always furious at us for taking the “wrong” position on the issue — even though, until it moved to the front burner back in the spring, we didn’t have a position on it.
Nor did Mr. Barrett consider it a priority, until late 2004. At least, none of the thousands of news outlets whose archives are available on Lexis-Nexis report his having a burning concern.
During the past year, his name and the word “immigration” showed up 53 times. In the previous year, only 20 times. In all previous years, 40 times. Back when he was first running for Congress in 2002, he was talking about keeping out terrorists, mainly from such places as Iran and Iraq. In fact, opponent Jim Klauber blasted him for paying too much attention to countries “where terrorists come from,” while ignoring “the greatest problem in the 3rd Congressional District” — which, to him, was illegal immigration from Mexico.
But now, and for the last couple of years, Mr. Barrett has stood foursquare behind the House’s “enforcement first” approach. He demonstrated his deep concern most recently by visiting the border personally, just before coming home to see constituents. So when he got an earful, he was prepared.
But I wasn’t, probably because I don’t watch TV and therefore haven’t had it explained to me by Bill O’Reilly. I still find myself wondering: Where did all these angry people come from? The ones who weren’t even talking about this issue a year ago, but now promise to toss Lindsey Graham out of the Senate for actually recognizing that this issue is really complicated.
How can anyone see this issue in black-and-white terms? Hey, I want to see the laws enforced, too. But I know that a nation that can’t find one guy in the mountains of Afghanistan isn’t going to round up 10 to 20 million people walking the streets of the freest, least-controlled nation in the world.
Yes, it’s theoretically possible to round up most of them. The Nazis probably could have achieved a success rate of 80 or 90 percent. And it’s probably possible to build a 2,000-mile fence that would be more-or-less impassable. China did it.
But at what cost? I’m not even talking moral or spiritual cost, in the sense of “what kind of nation would that make us?” I’ll let somebody else preach that sermon. I’m talking hard cash.
Look at the national debt. Look at our inadequate presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Check out the rising power of nations such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela, whom we are making impervious to international pressure with our insatiable thirst for petrol. Note that we don’t have the military assets to make Iran take us seriously when we suggest it should stop working on nukes for terrorists, or else. Or else what?
Let’s talk priorities, folks, not fantasies. The “invasion” that endangers this country isn’t a bunch of people looking to (gasp) sweep our Wal-Marts to feed their families. It’s Londoners getting on a flight at Heathrow with bogus tubes of Prell in their carry-ons.
Illegal immigration is a serious problem, when it gets to where you have 12 million aliens you can’t account for. Having our labor market, wages and working conditions distorted by a huge supply of cheap, illegal labor is also a serious problem. So is the fact that our neighbors suffer such crushing poverty that they will risk their lives coming here just to have their labor exploited.
But not one of these things is the most urgent problem facing this country. Not a year ago, and not now.

Proimmigrant

bradwarthen.com

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Category Archives: Economics

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Bubble, bubble, don’t talk trouble

What’s all this then about immigration?