It's pretty clear to anyone paying attention that our current regulatory setup for our financial system is greatly lacking, which is why the president's new plan to rework things is a good idea. The plan will likely get worked over pretty good in Congress and come out looking nothing like what Mr. Bush intended.
While I'm not an economist, as stated on the blog a few times, I can spot one flaw immediately. That's the increased power given to the Federal Reserve, according to analysis of the proposal in the media. The Fed, after all, is the chief enabler of the wrongdoers who got us in this mess in the first place, and it's policy of lower and lower interest rates is threatening to send us into a full scale recession -- not the pretend one we have now.
You know the score by now. Lower interest rates make more capital available for investment, which stimulates economic activity. Unfortunately, reduced interest rates also make the dollar less attractive for overseas investors, so the greenback continues to lose value against other currencies. The detrimental impact of dollar devaluation, like higher oil prices, has dominated the positives of improved capital liquidity.
Take oil, for example. The price of a barrel of oil is well over $100 now because of currency exchange rates more than anything being done by speculators, OPEC or the oil companies. That's hurting the trucking and airline businesses -- Aloha Airlines, the cheapest way to get to Hawaii, announced today its suspending operations Monday -- and crimping family finances. That's hurting us far more than lower interest rates are helping us.
The dollar, in the last three months of interest rate cutting, has slipped dramatically against both the euro and the Japanese yen.
The last cut, of .75 percent, sent the stock market soaring, but in a post that night I warned that by the end of this past week, the Dow Industrials would be lower. I was right. The night I posted, March 18, the Dow closed at 12,390. The index closed Friday at 12,216. Those gains didn't last too long.
So while changing our financial markets oversight system is good, providing more power to a terribly misguided Federal Reserve is not.
---
I almost posted something a week or two ago about a compromise Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore, and perhaps in the interest of displaying foresight, I should have. Everyone's talking about the idea now.
The way it works apparently is if the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton goes to Denver undecided, the superdelegates can withhold their votes in the first ballot, then offer Gore as a compromise candidate.
At first glance, I see very little downside to an Al Gore candidacy from the Democratic perspective. While blacks might still be unhappy if Obama doesn't capture the nomination, far less would boycott Gore in November than Clinton. And, by the time of the convention, the need for a compromise candidate might be obvious to all.
Gore lost in 2000, at least in the Electoral College, because he was tied much too closely to Clintonism, which the country was tired of at that point. That the voters would rather see the Clintons go away is pretty obvious, given Hillary's primary struggles against a half-term senator. However, Gore's increased popularity within the party in recent years shows that some sort of "Clinton Transference" is no long applicable in 2008.
His work to promote awareness of climate change and his early and unwavering opposition to the war in Iraq would help him keep most Democrat voters and pick up the vast majority of independents. Those who think he's overblown on global warming and wrong on Iraq are in the McCain camp already.
Three things could keep Gore out of the race. One, either Hillary or Obama falter and hand the race to their opponent. Second, as we've seen too many times with these political elites, his financial condition might be such that it would not stand up to campaign scrutiny. Nothing personal against Gore, but it's just how things are. Thirdly, he might find that he can better serve his pet cause more effectively if he remains outside electoral politics. He had eight years of hands-on experience of learning the limitations of the power of the presidency as Bill Clinton's understudy. Since leaving office, he's won an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize. 'nuff said.
---
The NCAA men's basketball tournament finally found perfection. For the first time, all four top regional seeds reached the Final Four, and did so without the expense of the fun of the playoffs: upsets. We get to see the four best teams in San Antonio. We also were able to enjoy the wonderful run to the Midwest Regional championship game of tiny Davidson, two wins from Western Kentucky and, closer to my heart, the University of San Diego's opening-round upset conquest of mighty UConn.
The tournament can still get better, however. In need of tweaking is the selection committee's seeding of the so-called "mid-majors," schools outside the major football-playing conferences. Obviously, Davidson was very poorly seeded as the 10th of 16 teams in its regional. A number two -- where it ended up -- would be silly, but the Wildcats through the season displayed its talent, with the nation's longest winning streak and strong performances against power non-conference teams. The Wildcats played one of the Final Four teams, Memphis I think, in a scrimmage, and the opposing coach called it a wake-up call for his own team. If he knew how good Davidson was, why not the seeding committee? This team should have been given a 4 or 5 seed.
Last year, the same could be said for Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV), which also went deep into the tournament. Fans of Mountain West Conference teams knew how good the Rebels were (much better than this season), so why did the seeding committee fail?
Of course, the gold standard for seeding misses was George Mason two years ago, which went to the Final Four despite being seeded 11th. In fairness to the selection committee, there wasn't nearly as much to recommend the Patriots as there was for Davidson and UNLV, but there was enough to make place them a couple spots higher.
There will never be a perfectly seeded tournament, and no one expects or wants one. The upsets are what makes it fun. I actually have paid very little attention to Final Four weekend the past decade or so. Means little to me. Most of the excitement is over by then. But the seeding committee has got to loosen up from its mindset of favoring power conference schools over the Davidsons, UNLVs and George Masons of the world.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Iraq After Five Years
My main feeling about the Iraq War since before starting the blog is that, after all this time, the arguments over why we're there are all water under the bridge -- we're there, so we darn well better do what we can to win.
It shows the quality of our national leadership that on this fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we're still bogged down in the same debates from back in the beginning.
Certainly, the Bush administration dug its collective grave with the way it justified and managed the war. The weapons of mass destruction used to get us into the war were old and useless, and mostly already disposed of. The follow-up to the toppling of Saddam Hussein was far too under-planned. The animosity between Sunnis and Shiites that was exploited by insurgents was ignored.
As bad as all that was, it was no justification for us to give up then and certainly no reason to throw in the towel now that we've turned the corner. Sure, there's still violence in Iraq. There always will be. The Surge has worked and it would be treasonous to pull the rug out from our armed forces members who have sacrificed so much to make this operation a success.
Feel free to argue all you like about how we got to Iraq, but leave the debate to the history books. We're on to a whole new phase -- have been for more than a year -- and out national discussion over Iraq policy has to take the new reality into account.
---
Future reality is that we're not going anywhere anytime soon. The military will remain in Iraq in force to maintain the fragile "peace" and somehow nurse the government toward reconciliation and providing tangible services to the people. If Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are elected president, they will surely pull some major combat units out of Iraq to satisfy their constituents, but they'll maintain a sizable force, either in country or in neighboring Kuwait. Honestly, troop levels might not be appreciably different whether the Democrats or John McCain wins the election.
---
I expected the downturn in the stock market following the Fed interest rate cut to be felt by the end of the week, not Wednesday. Well, the Dow Industrials dropped nearly 300 points, giving back about 3/4 of Tuesday's rally. Look for it to continue for a while.
It shows the quality of our national leadership that on this fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we're still bogged down in the same debates from back in the beginning.
Certainly, the Bush administration dug its collective grave with the way it justified and managed the war. The weapons of mass destruction used to get us into the war were old and useless, and mostly already disposed of. The follow-up to the toppling of Saddam Hussein was far too under-planned. The animosity between Sunnis and Shiites that was exploited by insurgents was ignored.
As bad as all that was, it was no justification for us to give up then and certainly no reason to throw in the towel now that we've turned the corner. Sure, there's still violence in Iraq. There always will be. The Surge has worked and it would be treasonous to pull the rug out from our armed forces members who have sacrificed so much to make this operation a success.
Feel free to argue all you like about how we got to Iraq, but leave the debate to the history books. We're on to a whole new phase -- have been for more than a year -- and out national discussion over Iraq policy has to take the new reality into account.
---
Future reality is that we're not going anywhere anytime soon. The military will remain in Iraq in force to maintain the fragile "peace" and somehow nurse the government toward reconciliation and providing tangible services to the people. If Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are elected president, they will surely pull some major combat units out of Iraq to satisfy their constituents, but they'll maintain a sizable force, either in country or in neighboring Kuwait. Honestly, troop levels might not be appreciably different whether the Democrats or John McCain wins the election.
---
I expected the downturn in the stock market following the Fed interest rate cut to be felt by the end of the week, not Wednesday. Well, the Dow Industrials dropped nearly 300 points, giving back about 3/4 of Tuesday's rally. Look for it to continue for a while.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Obama Speech Reaction, Another Rate Cut
I don't have much to say about Barack Obama's speech on the topic of race in Philadelphia, but considering my comments on this blog about his candidacy this week, I feel a bit obligated to pass along my reaction.
At its best, Obama's speech is a reminder why everyone got so excited about him in the first place. It was an address of soaring oratory with a promise of improved racial unity. At its worst, it fails to answer what got him in trouble the past couple weeks. He tried to take us back to the good times of his candidacy. He made an effort to get us to forget what's transpired in the past two weeks.
The lasting effect could very well be that we like his promise of better times ahead but lament that he ended up being unfit for the presidency.
---
Last week, it appeared that the Federal Reserve had figured out that dropping interest rates only offered short-term boosts to the economy at the cost of long-term damage from a weakened dollar.
Fast-forward to this week and the Fed Funds Rate is reduced by 3/4 point to its lowest level since 2004. Sure, the Dow Industrials skyrocket 420 points on the same day, but how long will that last? Will the stock market continue to climb the rest of the week? Will the Dow, a week from Friday, still be north of 12,390? We'll see. Recent history shows the odds are against it.
In fact, the price of a barrel of oil rose on news of the rate cut, which traders will probably use as an excuse to sell off their stock market shares. The oil prices dropped a bit Monday because of prospects of a slowing world economy.
Head spinning? Oh, yeah. I'm no economist, but it seems to me we have to treat the problem instead of the symptom.
At its best, Obama's speech is a reminder why everyone got so excited about him in the first place. It was an address of soaring oratory with a promise of improved racial unity. At its worst, it fails to answer what got him in trouble the past couple weeks. He tried to take us back to the good times of his candidacy. He made an effort to get us to forget what's transpired in the past two weeks.
The lasting effect could very well be that we like his promise of better times ahead but lament that he ended up being unfit for the presidency.
---
Last week, it appeared that the Federal Reserve had figured out that dropping interest rates only offered short-term boosts to the economy at the cost of long-term damage from a weakened dollar.
Fast-forward to this week and the Fed Funds Rate is reduced by 3/4 point to its lowest level since 2004. Sure, the Dow Industrials skyrocket 420 points on the same day, but how long will that last? Will the stock market continue to climb the rest of the week? Will the Dow, a week from Friday, still be north of 12,390? We'll see. Recent history shows the odds are against it.
In fact, the price of a barrel of oil rose on news of the rate cut, which traders will probably use as an excuse to sell off their stock market shares. The oil prices dropped a bit Monday because of prospects of a slowing world economy.
Head spinning? Oh, yeah. I'm no economist, but it seems to me we have to treat the problem instead of the symptom.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Spitzer, Obama and the Financial Players
When you're not what you present yourself to be, no one likes you anymore. Just ask Eliot Spitzer, Barack Obama or anyone who works on Wall Street.
-- Spitzer came off as a warrior against corporate and public -- but mainly corporate -- corruption, and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar in his use of high-priced prostitutes. Everyone afraid to speak out against "the steamroller" before didn't hesitate to say what they thought of the man. What's worse, public embarrassment or learning just much everyone hates you?
-- Obama was the white knight who would ride into Washington, D.C., and change the bad ways that things are done and unite the country. Now we learn that he's a product of the most corrupt political system in the United States and embraced a racially divisive preacher with an extreme hatred of white America. His favorable ratings have slipped below 50 percent in the past few days for the first time.
-- "Things are fine, things are fine" we kept hearing from the financial companies as we slipped toward recession in recent months. Now we discover that things indeed are fine, except with the financial companies, and the reason the economy as a whole is weak is because those firms are dragging everyone else down with them. If you toss the financial sector out, the stock market is not doing all that badly. Investors lost millions with last week's near-failure of Bear Stearns. Now investor confidence is said to be at a seven-year low.
The snippets above are classic examples of why we're in desperate need of a change in our national leadership. Spitzer, Obama and the financial executives all hoped that we'd turn our backs and not take notice of certain things. But when you're a public figure, you can only hide the dark side of your life for so long. It will eventually come out, and it did for all of them.
While Spitzer is likely to have his name become a verb, Obama could suffer even worse in public opinion unless he comes clean real fast. His recent efforts at excuse-making have not just been weak, but dug his hole deeper. A lot of us invested a lot of hope that he could be the one who would go to Washington and run the country in a better way than it was operated before. His betrayal, therefore, cuts far deeper than Spitzer's.
---
In some ways, I'm glad for what's happened to Obama's candidacy in recent weeks, because it might pull us back from the brink of a horrible break in relations between the races in this country.
Obama's campaign started as non-racial and inspirational, which is why Geraldine Ferraro was right to a degree with her controversial statements. Unfortunately, the Clintons have done everything to turn this into a race-based campaign and they've succeeded. Every so often, whether with the Ferraro comments or the Barack "Hussein" Obama references, they remind us that he is a black man.
Exit polling shows that black voters are now backing Obama by a 9-to-1 ratio and Clinton, while losing overall, is now winning decisively with white voters. Obama now carries the hopes of black America that he can become the first president with their skin color.
The worry has been that Clinton was going to find a way to steal the nomination for Obama, either by manipulating the superdelegates or primary rules. Just how black Americans would react to being ripped off in this way is uncertain. I'm not going to sit here and demean anyone by predicting riots or something. Might happen. Might not.
Whatever happens, it would be terribly sad for a presidential campaign that promised to bring the races together to end in a way that would tear us apart. Maybe we're lucky with Obama's struggles over the Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko and NAFTA. Those are legitimate issues that tell us about the man who would lead us. If those subjects are what sinks his candidacy, it would be better than a simple racial divide.
-- Spitzer came off as a warrior against corporate and public -- but mainly corporate -- corruption, and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar in his use of high-priced prostitutes. Everyone afraid to speak out against "the steamroller" before didn't hesitate to say what they thought of the man. What's worse, public embarrassment or learning just much everyone hates you?
-- Obama was the white knight who would ride into Washington, D.C., and change the bad ways that things are done and unite the country. Now we learn that he's a product of the most corrupt political system in the United States and embraced a racially divisive preacher with an extreme hatred of white America. His favorable ratings have slipped below 50 percent in the past few days for the first time.
-- "Things are fine, things are fine" we kept hearing from the financial companies as we slipped toward recession in recent months. Now we discover that things indeed are fine, except with the financial companies, and the reason the economy as a whole is weak is because those firms are dragging everyone else down with them. If you toss the financial sector out, the stock market is not doing all that badly. Investors lost millions with last week's near-failure of Bear Stearns. Now investor confidence is said to be at a seven-year low.
The snippets above are classic examples of why we're in desperate need of a change in our national leadership. Spitzer, Obama and the financial executives all hoped that we'd turn our backs and not take notice of certain things. But when you're a public figure, you can only hide the dark side of your life for so long. It will eventually come out, and it did for all of them.
While Spitzer is likely to have his name become a verb, Obama could suffer even worse in public opinion unless he comes clean real fast. His recent efforts at excuse-making have not just been weak, but dug his hole deeper. A lot of us invested a lot of hope that he could be the one who would go to Washington and run the country in a better way than it was operated before. His betrayal, therefore, cuts far deeper than Spitzer's.
---
In some ways, I'm glad for what's happened to Obama's candidacy in recent weeks, because it might pull us back from the brink of a horrible break in relations between the races in this country.
Obama's campaign started as non-racial and inspirational, which is why Geraldine Ferraro was right to a degree with her controversial statements. Unfortunately, the Clintons have done everything to turn this into a race-based campaign and they've succeeded. Every so often, whether with the Ferraro comments or the Barack "Hussein" Obama references, they remind us that he is a black man.
Exit polling shows that black voters are now backing Obama by a 9-to-1 ratio and Clinton, while losing overall, is now winning decisively with white voters. Obama now carries the hopes of black America that he can become the first president with their skin color.
The worry has been that Clinton was going to find a way to steal the nomination for Obama, either by manipulating the superdelegates or primary rules. Just how black Americans would react to being ripped off in this way is uncertain. I'm not going to sit here and demean anyone by predicting riots or something. Might happen. Might not.
Whatever happens, it would be terribly sad for a presidential campaign that promised to bring the races together to end in a way that would tear us apart. Maybe we're lucky with Obama's struggles over the Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko and NAFTA. Those are legitimate issues that tell us about the man who would lead us. If those subjects are what sinks his candidacy, it would be better than a simple racial divide.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Choose Your Pastor Well, Tibet Runs Rings Around or Out of China
I went into 2008 thinking that two expected things might not happen as planned: that Hillary Clinton would not be nominated for president by the Democratic Party, and that the Summer Olympics would not actually held in China. It's turning out that I'll probably be wrong on both counts, but there's elements of both situations upon which to hang my hat.
Regarding Clinton, it's pretty obvious that her fellow Democrats are not terribly enamored of her. She's behind in delegates to a one-term senator who speaks well but turns into a standard liberal in those rare instances when he speaks substantively. Really, if the party had anyone to offer at all, he or she would have the nomination easily in hand by now. Al Gore, for example, would have been planning for November a month ago. But he's not in the race.
Instead, it's Barack Obama who is giving Clinton fits, and just two weeks ago I would have said that my no-Hillary notion was correct. Political conditions can change dramatically in a half-month, however, and they appear to have done so in the race for the Democratic nomination.
I think Obama could have made it past the NAFTA flap and survived the Tony Rezko scandal. But the controversy over his pastor for 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, dooms his candidacy. There is no way Obama will become president of the United States in 2008. Maybe in a future election, when some distance of years is put between the two, and the Illinois senator can prove over time that his views and the pastor's are indeed different, maybe he'll be welcomed back.
I won't bore you with reminders of what Wright said. You've read them or heard them. You can avoid them. Obama can't, no matter how hard he tries.
The problem is that Obama's attempts to explain away his association with the Rev. Wright flies in the face of common sense, our normal life experiences. People who've been church, synagogue or mosque shopping, say after moving to a new town or souring on the place they had attended, know that Obama is full of it when it comes to his pastor.
Okay, you're in a new town. You go to churches near your neighborhood, which fit your taste between modern or traditional services, and have congregations full of people you like. That's all well and good. But if you don't agree with what the preacher says, you don't stick around. The minister is in many instances a make-or-break factor in whether you stay at that house of worship. The pastor can be a fine man, but if you don't see close to eye-to-eye with his interpretation of the Bible, Torah, or Koran, you're out of there. It's just the way it is.
One Easter, my wife and I went to her mother's church, which was not too far from where we lived. Our normal church, that we liked, was quite far away, so the relative proximity of this place offered some hope as an alternative for us. The pastor, on a day of celebration for Christians, delivered an incredibly poorly timed fire-and-brimstone sermon that literally shocked the heck out of me. Let's just say, we never went back while he was there.
If Barack Obama disagreed with what the Rev. Wright was saying -- over 20 years! -- he would have left. So maybe he wasn't in attendance for the 9/11 speech. He would have heard about it. Congregations have a way of communicating, and sermon remarks are probably the number one topic. I doubt that the Rev. Wright limited such talk to just one or two sermons when the future senator just happened to be out of town.
Let's face it. We've seen now, between the Rev. Wright and Tony Revko, the environment from which Barack Obama came. He will NOT become president of the United States this year.
---
The church comments have been great fodder for newspapers and, especially, conservative talking heads. Whether they mean much to Democrats, I'm not sure. Exit polls show that it's the educated wine-and-cheese non-church-going crowd that supports Obama. These are people who were daily fed similar comments by their college professors and came to agree with them.
While I think Democrats will realize Obama can no longer win and reluctantly nominate Clinton, I could be wrong.
---
As for China, there's really not a lot that can be done regarding their repression of Tibet. It's a decades-long thing. It's far away, China has us over a barrel financially, and we have more pressing matters to deal with.
If the Tibetan protests, and the bloody response by Chinese authorities, continue toward summer, will the United States and Europe be strong enough to pull their teams out of the Olympics, like they did for the Moscow games of 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a year earlier? I doubt it.
Even if the show does go on, it will be tainted. The cloud over Beijing won't just be smog.
Regarding Clinton, it's pretty obvious that her fellow Democrats are not terribly enamored of her. She's behind in delegates to a one-term senator who speaks well but turns into a standard liberal in those rare instances when he speaks substantively. Really, if the party had anyone to offer at all, he or she would have the nomination easily in hand by now. Al Gore, for example, would have been planning for November a month ago. But he's not in the race.
Instead, it's Barack Obama who is giving Clinton fits, and just two weeks ago I would have said that my no-Hillary notion was correct. Political conditions can change dramatically in a half-month, however, and they appear to have done so in the race for the Democratic nomination.
I think Obama could have made it past the NAFTA flap and survived the Tony Rezko scandal. But the controversy over his pastor for 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, dooms his candidacy. There is no way Obama will become president of the United States in 2008. Maybe in a future election, when some distance of years is put between the two, and the Illinois senator can prove over time that his views and the pastor's are indeed different, maybe he'll be welcomed back.
I won't bore you with reminders of what Wright said. You've read them or heard them. You can avoid them. Obama can't, no matter how hard he tries.
The problem is that Obama's attempts to explain away his association with the Rev. Wright flies in the face of common sense, our normal life experiences. People who've been church, synagogue or mosque shopping, say after moving to a new town or souring on the place they had attended, know that Obama is full of it when it comes to his pastor.
Okay, you're in a new town. You go to churches near your neighborhood, which fit your taste between modern or traditional services, and have congregations full of people you like. That's all well and good. But if you don't agree with what the preacher says, you don't stick around. The minister is in many instances a make-or-break factor in whether you stay at that house of worship. The pastor can be a fine man, but if you don't see close to eye-to-eye with his interpretation of the Bible, Torah, or Koran, you're out of there. It's just the way it is.
One Easter, my wife and I went to her mother's church, which was not too far from where we lived. Our normal church, that we liked, was quite far away, so the relative proximity of this place offered some hope as an alternative for us. The pastor, on a day of celebration for Christians, delivered an incredibly poorly timed fire-and-brimstone sermon that literally shocked the heck out of me. Let's just say, we never went back while he was there.
If Barack Obama disagreed with what the Rev. Wright was saying -- over 20 years! -- he would have left. So maybe he wasn't in attendance for the 9/11 speech. He would have heard about it. Congregations have a way of communicating, and sermon remarks are probably the number one topic. I doubt that the Rev. Wright limited such talk to just one or two sermons when the future senator just happened to be out of town.
Let's face it. We've seen now, between the Rev. Wright and Tony Revko, the environment from which Barack Obama came. He will NOT become president of the United States this year.
---
The church comments have been great fodder for newspapers and, especially, conservative talking heads. Whether they mean much to Democrats, I'm not sure. Exit polls show that it's the educated wine-and-cheese non-church-going crowd that supports Obama. These are people who were daily fed similar comments by their college professors and came to agree with them.
While I think Democrats will realize Obama can no longer win and reluctantly nominate Clinton, I could be wrong.
---
As for China, there's really not a lot that can be done regarding their repression of Tibet. It's a decades-long thing. It's far away, China has us over a barrel financially, and we have more pressing matters to deal with.
If the Tibetan protests, and the bloody response by Chinese authorities, continue toward summer, will the United States and Europe be strong enough to pull their teams out of the Olympics, like they did for the Moscow games of 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a year earlier? I doubt it.
Even if the show does go on, it will be tainted. The cloud over Beijing won't just be smog.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The Fed Figures it Out; Spits Her; More
The most striking part of the move by the Federal Reserve to allow financial firms to borrow up to $200 billion in Treasurys in exchange for using troubled mortgage-backed securities as collateral is what didn't happen. Interest rates were not lowered.
It had been widely speculated that another drop in interest rates was on the way as the economy struggled, and it was widely suggested that such a move would have been the worst thing the Fed could do. Chairman Ben Bernanke has lowered rates several times to pump fresh capital into the marketplace, but the side effect of lowering the value of the dollar has had a far bigger negative impact than the positive of the additional capital. The price of a barrel of crude oil, for example, climbed above $109 and the euro is at an all-time high vs our greenback.
By doing what the Fed did today, they diplayed some new creative thinking that shows they are truly working to solve the problems faced by our economy, instead of using the old-fashioned response of lowering rates -- because it's what we always do and it seemed to work before. The stock markets had their best day in six years.
Now, I've never pretended to be an expert in economics. I have no idea about the downsides of the agreement and whether it will really help solve the problems in the financial markets, or be another band-aid or worse, actually hurt us in the long run. But the Fed has now realized that interest rates have been lowered too far and that the resulting value of the dollar has sunk too fast. That's good. A good start.
---
First one to make strengthening the value of the dollar a campaign issue wins.
---
There's certain things about California that are better than New York, such as weather, a more relaxed lifestyle and a governor that women would be willing to pay to share a bed with than the other way around.
The downfall of Eliot Spitzer would be amazing if, in fact, it was a surprise. But it's not. These politicians are like athletes, they think they can get away with anything, because many of them do. Lord knows what others are up to (probably been a lot of canceled paid dates this week). Eventually, though, they'll get caught, whether they be Barney Frank or Larry Craig. Even Bill Clinton was slapped on the wrist for his hanky-panky.
In general, I really don't care if someone goes to see a prostitute or not. Their business. Even understandable for someone who is disabled or a military member on long term deployment. David Vitter, the senator from Louisiana, who cares what he does? Don't like it? Don't vote for him next time.
Spitzer is another matter. He's made prosecutions of prostitution rings, like the one he frequented, a central part of his career. He's made ethics the backbone of his governorship. It's being said that he's destroyed careers and lives of others in order to get ahead (the guy appears to be highly disliked). And it's reported today that he spent tens of thousands of dollars on hookers and preferred to go without condoms. That's bad financial and social judgment.
He's just another politician who hoped you would not notice or care. He was wrong on the noticing. Let's hope he's also wrong on the caring.
---
Former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro is under fire today for suggesting that the reason why Barack Obama has risen so high in his campaign is because he's black. Ferraro is a major backer of Hillary Clinton's campaign, sitting on her finance committee and speaking at rallies.
Under fire, she's holding to her position. She's also right to an extent.
Obama's positive campaign about hope and uniting America is inspirational in large part because of what he is, a black man. Voters are used to hearing about the struggles of black America, so when this candidate comes out and tells us how great things can be, we love it. Average White Man can do the same thing and probably do well, but not get as far as Obama has.
This is about proportion. His success is in no way entirely because of his skin color, but his race is definitely not a non-factor. It has something to do with his success. There's always a knee-jerk reaction against people who enter race into an equation, even when they're correct and not malevolent. Ferraro should get a pass on this one.
It had been widely speculated that another drop in interest rates was on the way as the economy struggled, and it was widely suggested that such a move would have been the worst thing the Fed could do. Chairman Ben Bernanke has lowered rates several times to pump fresh capital into the marketplace, but the side effect of lowering the value of the dollar has had a far bigger negative impact than the positive of the additional capital. The price of a barrel of crude oil, for example, climbed above $109 and the euro is at an all-time high vs our greenback.
By doing what the Fed did today, they diplayed some new creative thinking that shows they are truly working to solve the problems faced by our economy, instead of using the old-fashioned response of lowering rates -- because it's what we always do and it seemed to work before. The stock markets had their best day in six years.
Now, I've never pretended to be an expert in economics. I have no idea about the downsides of the agreement and whether it will really help solve the problems in the financial markets, or be another band-aid or worse, actually hurt us in the long run. But the Fed has now realized that interest rates have been lowered too far and that the resulting value of the dollar has sunk too fast. That's good. A good start.
---
First one to make strengthening the value of the dollar a campaign issue wins.
---
There's certain things about California that are better than New York, such as weather, a more relaxed lifestyle and a governor that women would be willing to pay to share a bed with than the other way around.
The downfall of Eliot Spitzer would be amazing if, in fact, it was a surprise. But it's not. These politicians are like athletes, they think they can get away with anything, because many of them do. Lord knows what others are up to (probably been a lot of canceled paid dates this week). Eventually, though, they'll get caught, whether they be Barney Frank or Larry Craig. Even Bill Clinton was slapped on the wrist for his hanky-panky.
In general, I really don't care if someone goes to see a prostitute or not. Their business. Even understandable for someone who is disabled or a military member on long term deployment. David Vitter, the senator from Louisiana, who cares what he does? Don't like it? Don't vote for him next time.
Spitzer is another matter. He's made prosecutions of prostitution rings, like the one he frequented, a central part of his career. He's made ethics the backbone of his governorship. It's being said that he's destroyed careers and lives of others in order to get ahead (the guy appears to be highly disliked). And it's reported today that he spent tens of thousands of dollars on hookers and preferred to go without condoms. That's bad financial and social judgment.
He's just another politician who hoped you would not notice or care. He was wrong on the noticing. Let's hope he's also wrong on the caring.
---
Former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro is under fire today for suggesting that the reason why Barack Obama has risen so high in his campaign is because he's black. Ferraro is a major backer of Hillary Clinton's campaign, sitting on her finance committee and speaking at rallies.
Under fire, she's holding to her position. She's also right to an extent.
Obama's positive campaign about hope and uniting America is inspirational in large part because of what he is, a black man. Voters are used to hearing about the struggles of black America, so when this candidate comes out and tells us how great things can be, we love it. Average White Man can do the same thing and probably do well, but not get as far as Obama has.
This is about proportion. His success is in no way entirely because of his skin color, but his race is definitely not a non-factor. It has something to do with his success. There's always a knee-jerk reaction against people who enter race into an equation, even when they're correct and not malevolent. Ferraro should get a pass on this one.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
The Accidental Border Warrior
It's doubtful that Bob Orlosky planned to become a soldier in the rural border war when in 1993 he bought a large piece of property outside the community of Jamul, about 20 miles east of San Diego. The electrical contractor then in his 40s found himself, however, in circumstances that spiraled out of control, so much so that in the past six weeks, he's been on trial for first-degree murder.
Today, a jury acquitted Orlosky, 56, of that murder charge and some other counts, but were unable to agree on lesser charges such as voluntary manslaughter. The District Attorney announced he'll be retried on those unresolved counts. I generally don't post on items I directly cover for my main job, but in this case I make an exception because it fits in so well with what I've been writing about.
I've previously written on this blog that the Mexican border has in some areas dissolved into open warfare. Add some of the great difficulties facing our rural communities, and this now-56-year-old man truly had his hands full -- to overflowing. Orlosky, by my observation a rather mild-mannered person, was terribly miscast as a front-line warrior, completely unfit to make the sort of life-or-death split-second decisions required by someone in his precarious position. He might be a fine electrical contractor, someone who worked on large commercial projects throughout the Southwest. A soldier, no.
Some background. After he bought, he found that illegal immigrants from the border, about 10 miles to the south, would cross his property on their trek north. On one occasion, he counted 125 people in a group walking across his land, without permission.
Then there were the robberies. Jamul used to be just before the end of civilization. While some western stretches of town have become highly populated, most of it remains quite rural. His place was on a hill along a road that had a name that didn't end with "boulevard" or "avenue." His ended with "Truck Trail." He was in the middle of nowhere.
His property was large enough to store electrical equipment and a trailer that housed his offices. It made for an inviting target and, when he testified, he said his losses ran into the many tens of thousands of dollars.
Making things worse, in the past five years, the cost of construction materials has skyrocketed, and there was a corresponding jump in their scrap value. Chief among these materials has been copper. As an electrical contractor, Orlosky always had a lot of copper on hand. The thefts just got worse. It was usually drug addicts who stole copper and resold it to recyclers for quick money and, the unfortunate coincidences continuing to build for Orlosky, the East County area of San Diego is full of methamphetamine addicts.
By this time, he'd bought an AR-15 assault rifle. In mid-November 2006, he used that rifle to apprehend three copper thieves. Plagued by illegal immigrants crossing his land and drug addicts stealing his livelihood, Orlosky reached his fateful evening just two weeks later.
According to Orlosky's own testimony, sometime around 7pm on Dec. 1, 2006, alarms from security sensors went off warning him that people had entered his property. He saw a Jeep Cherokee go by and witnessed people enter his equipment yard. He got into his own pickup truck and drove to where they went, and pulled to the side of the road and waited. He got out of his truck as the Jeep came down the hill.
Here's where things get dicey. The young man driving the Jeep testified that he and one of his passengers were interested in buying homes, and there were real estate signs there that prompted them to drive into the area. Seeing Orlosky by his pickup, they slowed down to see if he might need help.
Orlosky recalled it differently. He tried to block the Jeep's path with his pickup, but the Jeep came quickly down the hill, straight at him. He fired the AR-15 repeatedly as it went past -- it did squeeze by his truck. The other man said to be interested in purchasing a house, Charles Crow, was struck by a bullet in his head and died. A second passenger was wounded.
What the mens' intentions really were remains unclear. The sheriff's lead investigator testified that they had sold copper to recyclers in the past, but there was no evidence in the truck that they were trying to steal something that night. The jury obviously didn't believe the driver or the person who was wounded.
Orlosky made the really boneheaded move of going to Las Vegas for several days -- he claimed to handle a new business venture -- and was arrested for murder when he came back.
Overwhelmed man just protecting his property? That's obviously how the jury saw it, since he was acquitted of murder.
A man completely out of his element fighting a two-front rural border war? Absolutely.
---
To be clear, I covered the trial about once a week. I saw a lot of important stuff, and missed some other key portions. I saw enough to get a feel for what happened. I listened to the testimony of the Jeep driver, the sheriff's detective and the defendant.
The story portrayed on local talk radio was of Orlosky getting railroaded by an out of control liberal DA's Office. Since it's likely I'll have a hand in covering the retrial, I'll keep my opinions to myself for now on that issue.
---
So much for Barack Obama's integrity. This is turning into, by far, the most challenging week of his campaign.
First, it's learned that after his anti-NAFTA campaign tirades, he reassured Canada that it was just political talk and that our northern neighbor had nothing to worry about. He denied that he'd contacted the Canadians in that manner and was caught being way, way undertruthful. Political lesson number one, never lie to the media because they'll rub your face in it.
Second, his major Chicago political backer has gone on trial for corruption, and is accused of a highly dubious land deal involving Obama.
Now rival Hillary Clinton is getting back into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. As of this writing, she's headed to a big win in Ohio and is narrowly leading in Texas. Both offer a bucketful of delegates.
Obama has had it pretty easy to this point. The measure of a candidate, indeed any political leader, is how they react when under pressure. When things go poorly. Now we have our chance to examine how Obama handles himself, and how his campaign conducts itself, when he's under a microscope.
Today, a jury acquitted Orlosky, 56, of that murder charge and some other counts, but were unable to agree on lesser charges such as voluntary manslaughter. The District Attorney announced he'll be retried on those unresolved counts. I generally don't post on items I directly cover for my main job, but in this case I make an exception because it fits in so well with what I've been writing about.
I've previously written on this blog that the Mexican border has in some areas dissolved into open warfare. Add some of the great difficulties facing our rural communities, and this now-56-year-old man truly had his hands full -- to overflowing. Orlosky, by my observation a rather mild-mannered person, was terribly miscast as a front-line warrior, completely unfit to make the sort of life-or-death split-second decisions required by someone in his precarious position. He might be a fine electrical contractor, someone who worked on large commercial projects throughout the Southwest. A soldier, no.
Some background. After he bought, he found that illegal immigrants from the border, about 10 miles to the south, would cross his property on their trek north. On one occasion, he counted 125 people in a group walking across his land, without permission.
Then there were the robberies. Jamul used to be just before the end of civilization. While some western stretches of town have become highly populated, most of it remains quite rural. His place was on a hill along a road that had a name that didn't end with "boulevard" or "avenue." His ended with "Truck Trail." He was in the middle of nowhere.
His property was large enough to store electrical equipment and a trailer that housed his offices. It made for an inviting target and, when he testified, he said his losses ran into the many tens of thousands of dollars.
Making things worse, in the past five years, the cost of construction materials has skyrocketed, and there was a corresponding jump in their scrap value. Chief among these materials has been copper. As an electrical contractor, Orlosky always had a lot of copper on hand. The thefts just got worse. It was usually drug addicts who stole copper and resold it to recyclers for quick money and, the unfortunate coincidences continuing to build for Orlosky, the East County area of San Diego is full of methamphetamine addicts.
By this time, he'd bought an AR-15 assault rifle. In mid-November 2006, he used that rifle to apprehend three copper thieves. Plagued by illegal immigrants crossing his land and drug addicts stealing his livelihood, Orlosky reached his fateful evening just two weeks later.
According to Orlosky's own testimony, sometime around 7pm on Dec. 1, 2006, alarms from security sensors went off warning him that people had entered his property. He saw a Jeep Cherokee go by and witnessed people enter his equipment yard. He got into his own pickup truck and drove to where they went, and pulled to the side of the road and waited. He got out of his truck as the Jeep came down the hill.
Here's where things get dicey. The young man driving the Jeep testified that he and one of his passengers were interested in buying homes, and there were real estate signs there that prompted them to drive into the area. Seeing Orlosky by his pickup, they slowed down to see if he might need help.
Orlosky recalled it differently. He tried to block the Jeep's path with his pickup, but the Jeep came quickly down the hill, straight at him. He fired the AR-15 repeatedly as it went past -- it did squeeze by his truck. The other man said to be interested in purchasing a house, Charles Crow, was struck by a bullet in his head and died. A second passenger was wounded.
What the mens' intentions really were remains unclear. The sheriff's lead investigator testified that they had sold copper to recyclers in the past, but there was no evidence in the truck that they were trying to steal something that night. The jury obviously didn't believe the driver or the person who was wounded.
Orlosky made the really boneheaded move of going to Las Vegas for several days -- he claimed to handle a new business venture -- and was arrested for murder when he came back.
Overwhelmed man just protecting his property? That's obviously how the jury saw it, since he was acquitted of murder.
A man completely out of his element fighting a two-front rural border war? Absolutely.
---
To be clear, I covered the trial about once a week. I saw a lot of important stuff, and missed some other key portions. I saw enough to get a feel for what happened. I listened to the testimony of the Jeep driver, the sheriff's detective and the defendant.
The story portrayed on local talk radio was of Orlosky getting railroaded by an out of control liberal DA's Office. Since it's likely I'll have a hand in covering the retrial, I'll keep my opinions to myself for now on that issue.
---
So much for Barack Obama's integrity. This is turning into, by far, the most challenging week of his campaign.
First, it's learned that after his anti-NAFTA campaign tirades, he reassured Canada that it was just political talk and that our northern neighbor had nothing to worry about. He denied that he'd contacted the Canadians in that manner and was caught being way, way undertruthful. Political lesson number one, never lie to the media because they'll rub your face in it.
Second, his major Chicago political backer has gone on trial for corruption, and is accused of a highly dubious land deal involving Obama.
Now rival Hillary Clinton is getting back into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. As of this writing, she's headed to a big win in Ohio and is narrowly leading in Texas. Both offer a bucketful of delegates.
Obama has had it pretty easy to this point. The measure of a candidate, indeed any political leader, is how they react when under pressure. When things go poorly. Now we have our chance to examine how Obama handles himself, and how his campaign conducts itself, when he's under a microscope.
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