Before
A chronicle of an American life
Archive for Political
20 March 2008 at 5.36 pm · Filed under Culture, Political
I’ve been really sick the last four days, and probably spending more time on the Internet than usual. Nothing is more discouraging than a few minutes at the China Daily website, the English-language “news” site which has become increasingly more professional over the years, and thusly, more dangerous.
The lead story on the BBC News webpage is about severe protests and demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet. There, you can read that activists have released graphic photos of dead bodies showing bullet wounds, and that the police have finally admitted to firing shots at some protesters. You’ll also read that riot police raided a monastery, causing 300 monks to run for their lives as police committed acts of “gratuitous violence” and kicked monks in the stomach while they lay on the ground. The phone service had mysteriously been cut. And the BBC’s own reporters noted that there had been severe limitations on their travel and ability to report.
Cruise over to China Daily. The lead story is on the Olympic flame. Click on “China” to get national news stories. The lead story there is “China’s new cabinet maps out working rules.” You have to dig for a story about the crisis, and I found one. 105 Lhasa rioters surrender to police. There, you’ll read that “rioters” killed innocent civilians. There’s no mention of China’s military actions. But, there is a link to a story couple of days old titled, We fired no gunshots — Tibetan government chairman. I wasn’t able to find any article admitting that the government in fact had shot anyone. Rather, I found a humorous and pathetic grab-all story recounting that local religious authorities were decrying the Dalai Lama (who’s won the Nobel Peace Prize), that Tibet’s 1957 military invasion was “peaceful,” and for good measure, that “mobs” stoned a Han Chinese girl’s head without provocation. (The Han are eastern China’s ethnic majority.)
Although China Daily never likes airing China’s own dirty laundry, it always enjoys having a good laugh at the United States — a country where protests against the government usually do not result in death. Some people actually take pride in the fact that this is a country where protesting is legal: a point that seems lost on the site’s editors. Thus, photos of Iraq war protesters are often prominently displayed on the front page, including today. This is pretty typical for the website, but what I found truly bizarre is that the CD has created a special slideshow about Eliot Spitzer. For fans of the absurd, this is not to be missed. What sounds like plaintive Chinese pop music starts up soon into the slides. As the captions peter out, it appears that the editors are simply running out the clock so that they can finish the song. I have asked for a translation.
Also good for a laugh is the commentary, Property boom is here to stay. After the ritualistic paean to Beijing’s “beaming vitality” and the amusingly gushing reference to “millions of skyscrapers being erected” (do the math — even in China, it can’t be millions), the author gets down to business. “Are these sprouting buildings constructed on speculated ground, as property prices have been surging at a pace faster than the average growth in incomes?” The answer is, of course not. Do I even need to spell out the irony here? And tragically, the author has failed to learn his microecon 101, confusingly calling the government to impose “price controls to make housing affordable for everyone” (but China must not “resort to administrative means to rein in housing prices”) while at the same time “subsidizing buyers with cash reimbursement” and cutting deals with developers to cap initial sale prices. Huh? Even Paul Krugman could not get behind this weird a plan, but “the authorities seem to have acknowledged this approach.” And despite the opening reference to China’s glittering array of wealth, the column contains the rare admission that it is “a society where the majority of people cannot afford housing.”
As the Olympics near, we are going to hear more and more about how China is doing for itself. The record continues to be one of shame. And I remind people that it was just 2001 that China’s military captured and interrogated several U.S. airmen after one of their inept pilots caused a mid-air collision. They are not our friends. In the 1980’s, America was obsessed with the prospect of having to surrender our economy to the Japanese, and that was a country we actually got along with. It is a long road from the China of 2008 to the Japan of 1980.
19 October 2007 at 10.26 pm · Filed under Political
It’s not often that I get to say this, but I was right and I have proof.
If you have been reading my site forever, you’ll remember that I wrote about Jack Whittaker, the man who won a $314.9 million Christmas Powerball jackpot, back on December 29, 2002. In that posting, I argued that the lottery was bad for the people of West Virginia, who are among the poorest in the nation, because it lures them into wasting money on a prize they have no realistic hope of winning. I still believe that huge jackpots like Whittaker’s are dangerous, because they give hope to those susceptible to playing the lottery, and the lottery almost never pays off.
Unfortunately, what happened to Whittaker shows that the payoff isn’t always something you’d want. Whittaker himself has suffered greatly from the burden of winning all that money, according to a recent AP news story and other reports.
According to the Lincoln Journal Star, July 27, 2007, “his granddaughter died of a drug overdose; he was sued for bouncing checks at Atlantic City, N.J., casinos; he was ordered to undergo rehab after being arrested on drunken driving charges; … and he settled a lawsuit filed by the father of an 18-year-old boy, a friend of his granddaughter’s, who was found dead of an overdose in Whittaker’s house.” The New York Times reported in 2003 that “[m]ore than $500,000 was stolen from a sport utility vehicle that [Whittaker] parked at a strip club,” although the money was recovered. But Whittaker didn’t learn his lesson, according to another Times report in 2004, because his truck was robbed again of $100,000. (I haven’t seen that kind of cash rattling around in a back seat since 2005, when Justice Terrence O’Donnell told Cleveland police the $18,000 cash stuffed in a suit bag that was stolen out of his car was merely the product of years of accumulated pocket change.)
A lengthy September 2007 AP story, part of which appeared in the Columbus Dispatch, tells the most human part of the tragedy. “His wife left him and his drug-addicted granddaughter — his protege and heir — died. He endured constant requests for money. Almost five years later, Whittaker is left with things money can’t cure: His daughter’s cancer, a long list of indiscretions documented in newspapers and court records, and an inability to trust others.” He still works, starting the day at 5am, but the story reports on Whittaker’s struggles with “drinking, gambling and philandering,” and by his own account, he has been “involved in 460 legal actions since winning” (some baseless, brought by people who figured he could afford to pay out). The saddest part has to be that he had hoped his granddaughter would inherit his businesses and fortune, and had structured everything to go to her when she turned 21. But a year after Whittaker won the lottery, the 15-year-old granddaughter was in Oxycontin rehab, and she died just 17 years old with cocaine and methadone in her system and a syringe and pills in her bra. According to the article, “Her body was found two weeks later wrapped in a sheet and plastic tarp, hidden in a yard by a boyfriend who panicked when he found her dead.”
Come on, people. Lotteries are bad news. They hurt those who can afford to waste money the least. (Interestingly, by all accounts Whittaker was a millionare when he won, owning his own pipeline construction company, so he should have been better suited than most to handle the sudden wealth.) Most people lose every dollar they bet, or win only token amounts. No one should play lotteries, and no democratic state should be in the business of profiting off these gambling rackets. Whittaker’s sad story is just one example why.
11 July 2007 at 1.23 am · Filed under Political, Solely personal
While a voter may be of any stripe, a political career in this country isn’t really open to those who refuse to belong to a party. All my life I’ve been a Republican, and I am the most conservative one of all my friends. But lately, I’ve been reexamining my beliefs.
Certainly, being a Republican hasn’t actually meant voting Republican every time. While I have almost always voted in the Republican primary, I’ve had real trouble swallowing certain nominees – sometimes because of the anti-gay thing, sometimes just because the candidates are terrible. I’m thinking particularly of President Bush in 2004 and of Kenneth Blackwell last year. So often, the party lets me down by nominating the unacceptable.
Because I’m pragmatic, however, I never waste my vote. And because making a practical electoral difference in this country means voting for one of the two parties’ candidates, if I find a Republican repugnant, then I will vote for the Democratic dolt. (I hope that was fair and balanced.) Since I wouldn’t want to think of myself as hewing slavishly to any single party’s line anyway, political cross-dressing doesn’t really bother me once in a while.
But lately, I’ve been afflicted with certain strange thoughts. I voted for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Strickland. All of my pals are liberals or at least moderates. Even my family has drifted leftward. One day it hit me: am I a Democrat???
It sounds like a tragic mid-life coming out story, doesn’t it? I took the issue up with a centrist-thinking friend who told me, “The Democratic Party is the party of the future.” And he didn’t even laugh ironically afterward! He was thoughtful enough to arrange a lunch meeting for himself and me with a prominent local Republican leader. I came away grateful but generally unswayed in either direction.
To my mind, the Democratic Party is the party of unions, welfare largesse, isolationism through trade barriers, greedy Detroit autoworkers, and escalating the war in Vietnam. It is the party that benefits from and exploits the continuing racial divide in this country. It is the party of the past.
Of course, the Republican Party is the party of union-busters, giant deficits, isolationism through treaty withdrawals, greedy Detroit automakers, and escalating the war in Iraq. It is the party that benefits from and exploits the continuing racial divide in this country. It is also the party of the past.
Neither party has it quite right. The Democrats are an unruly coalition of minority groups and special interests, but so are the Republicans. Neither party has consistent principles – Republicans say they’re for free trade, but I still remember Bush’s illegal protectionist steel tariffs in 2002, which just happened to benefit industry in the swing states of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Democrats say they stand for the little guy but their loudest demagogues oppose free trade even though the flood of cheaper goods into this country helps those with the least money the most. Republicans stand for personal freedom and liberty, but not in the bedroom and not within earshot of a wiretapping federal agent. Democrats support certain famous health-related “choices” and the legalization of marijuana, but then ban the smoking of tobacco. Both parties profess a belief in the market but perenially pass a farm bill that pays people to farm and not to farm. Who are all these people? Both parties are stuck with layer upon sedimentary layer of past compromise and always have to weigh each proposal’s effect on their precariously assembled electoral blocs. Ideological leadership is missing on both sides.
Enter Michael Bloomberg. Revisit: a vote for anyone other than a Republican or Democrat is a wasted vote. Exit Michael Bloomberg.
My problem is that I’d be a little uneasy swallowing whole-heartedly the platform of either party. (Both generally and specifically: if you look at the platforms that each party puts out in a presidential election year, nobody completely buys them or remembers them.) This would all be academic if I thought I wanted to remain on the sidelines of the process as a mere voter. Some day, though, I would like to be a candidate, and parties like candidates with a long track record. Remember, I’m a pragmatist, so I’d rather find myself on the inside of a party that needs changing, than to be standing outside both parties, proudly independent from both but powerless to influence neither.
Neither party has ever had a lock on our country’s future or direction. California elected Schwarzenegger and Massachusetts elected Weld. The funny thing about 20th century America is that the pendulum always swung fully in both directions, and in Ohio in 2006 that pattern certainly continued. (As pollster Charlie Cook told me during a presentation at Nationwide, “Sometimes people lose just because they’re wearing the wrong color jersey. This year, you don’t want to be wearing a red jersey.”) So the good news for the truly crass, which excludes me, is that it doesn’t really matter which party you choose in the long run – they come out about the same. But that doesn’t help when it comes to actually choosing.
What’s a considerate citizen to do? So far there are no good answers, and I’m still thinking.
21 April 2007 at 9.19 pm · Filed under City life, Political
Dear Mayor Coleman:
This week, while driving to work, I caught a few minutes of a story on public radio about some new “Young Professionals” initiative. Since I’m 29 and professional-esque, my eyes pricked up. They aired several sound bites from an incredibly excitable consultant about what we could try to improve life here. It sounds like you are trying to attract and keep more young, hip professional citizens in Columbus, which is a good idea and an uphill slog. I’m sure you noticed that the Census recently reported Ohio is now one of the top exporters of talented college graduates.
But what I heard on the radio didn’t do it for me, and since I’m actually in the target demo, I thought I’d let you know. First off, tell your advisors we young professionals never want to be referred to as “YP’s” again. Just go ahead and call us yuppies, but not YP’s. Yucky Poo.
The person on the radio was concerned that we don’t have enough information about what’s going on here. She suggested that we what we want is an online calendar telling us what the local events are. Further, apparently you need to re-invent Mapquest, because “people don’t even know where in their neighborhood the grocery stores are!” She told us that we want more bikeways, and that it (apparently) will be a big draw if Columbus would be the location of the first statewide “young professionals’ conference.” Also, she pointed out that Milwaukee has three and a half people working full time on attracting young professionals, and “even Cincinnati has someone.” Shouldn’t you consider hiring her as a full time YP-attractor, too?
Well, no. You’re the mayor of a big city, and you have services to provide to the general population. Just focus on the basics, and the city will take care of itself.
Take transportation: why was I driving one mile to work, anyway, except for the fact that such a trip on the bus costs $1.50 and takes almost 20 minutes? Connecting the city’s bike routes and parks would be a good idea, but the city’s pace of construction is glacial, downtown still isn’t linked with most of the regional bike assets, and there isn’t a single, real, marked bike lane anywhere in town. It would be nice if we could get more non-stop flights out of CMH, too (but I refuse to ride in the Nationwide-logo Skybus “demonstration plane”).
Fire response time could improve. It took the fire department about fifteen minutes to get here the last time I called, even though the station is only seven blocks away. What were they doing?
Why is garbage collection still free while recycling costs good money? We’re always running out of landfill space. If you really want to attract hip young things, make Columbus a truly green city. I can’t name any environmental initiative you’ve sponsored at all. (Hell, even inept COTA runs bio-diesel buses.)
Finally, I can’t resist pointing out that I was with you when you stared at the first arch over High Street back in 2002, and the dang things still don’t work. Turn the lights on!
I’m not complaining too much; things work reasonably well here (we’re not Cincinnati), but don’t let yourself get distracted with these consultants. No one ever moved to Austin or Seattle or New York because the city government set up a web site. You can’t change the weather or give us an ocean, but you can fix the nuts and bolts. The jobs and residents will follow.
Sincerely,
Bill Cash
10 April 2007 at 12.19 pm · Filed under Political, The law
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed riling up my friends on the left, Marcus Banks and Venezuelan Army Maj. Marty Stroodler, over the issue of D.C. voting rights. To Justme, I would retort that holding a sign reading “Will Make Political Commentary for Money,” and actually eating because of it, is a wonderful dream.
Washington, D.C., which the Supreme Court relegated to mere and literal footnote status last week, is clearly a banana republic that should be squelched until it learns its lesson.
Well, I’m kidding somewhat. In all this debate, I have been disappointed that no one took up for Washington as a normal American city. When I criticized the city for having no industry to speak of, I was sure I would hear “XM Radio!” (In truth, I just tried to think of another employer to include here that wasn’t 1) out on I-66 or I-270, 2) government, 3) quasi-government, 4) education, or 5) food, and I couldn’t do it. Sorry, Lady Columbia.) The city does have parks, rivers, boats, schools, etc. It deserves dignity as a regular place to grow up in, that just happens to have the capital. Tragically, its transient residential status caused the thousands of readers and commenters of our web logs collectively to bypass this aspect of Washington life.
“Retrocession,” or as I call it, “digestion by Maryland,” would degrade this unique character. I oppose it. Those who say it would free Washington of certain burdens, such as having to run a DMV, miss the point. This would strip Washington of its dignity as a special city. Further, it is impossible. The point of creating a “non-residential ‘federal quarter’” is to solve the voting problem by putting its population into a jurisdiction that has Congressional votes (Maryland) while leaving the part of the city that belongs to all America under federal control. The problem is that such a zone, at the minimum, would have to be a triangle containing the Jefferson Memorial, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and there are a lot of people living within that triangle. Either there would have to be forced evacuations for the purpose of creating a sterile zone, or those people would have to be left out of the plan to give voting rights to all citizens. Moreover, a sterile non-residential zone goes against principles of good city planning (Jacobs) and further debauches a grand old lady.
It seems unlikely that Washington will ever have the population to support two representatives. The city is atrophying and has lost about 40% of its population in the last fifty years; at the same time, the number of people supporting a single House seat grows ever higher. In 2010, the number of people needed for a State to claim two seats will exceed one million — five hundred thousand more than Washington has. Washington’s House delegation, if awarded proportionally to the other States, would never exceed one.
Senate representation is a great question. Logically, if the basis for granting a House seat is that people deserve an equal voice in Congress, then there is no reason not to grant a “full” two seats’ Senate representation. Otherwise, we’ll still have the “second-class status” argument hanging out there. (It was amusing to see Stroodler willing to bargain down to a single seat. Washington been down so long, it don’t know what up is.) But while the great constitutional compromise between the large and small States was to create two bodies, the House for the people and the Senate for the States, it does not justify granting Washington two Senate seats for the simple reason that Washington is not a State. (And we all agreed to leave at least part of Washington a “local government” rather than a State.)
I also find it interesting that in all this, nobody advanced the legal argument that the “District Clause” of the Constitution, art. I, cl. 17 (go here and search for “District”; also read interesting annotations), which provides that the Congress has broad powers to control affairs relating to the District, gives Congress the power to add a seat without a constitutional amendment. (I think this is because I’m the only law student involved and maybe this isn’t getting a lot of press.) This is a really dumb argument; it’s clear that the clause provides the power to control land use, building restrictions, police authority, and those kinds of things; it doesn’t let Congress restructure the Congress by changing its membership. I think it’s sad that some, including the Utahns colluding with the Democrats to add the seat, want to justify the change on this weak ground, rather than embarking on the lengthy moral crusade of amendment. By granting D.C. electoral votes, the American people have already demonstrated that if the cause is just, they will amend the Constitution even at the expense of their own interests. That is the surest route to solving this problem, whatever the solution may be.
P.S. Washington residents are also ineligible to vote for constitutional amendments. Have a nice day.
29 March 2007 at 12.53 am · Filed under Political, Random
The organization DC Vote has put up a documentary movie on its web site called “Un-Natural State.” It’s worth the eight minutes. (You can also get a teacher’s worksheet because the video apparently complies with Washington ninth grade history and government class standards.)
If you watch this video, you’re going to learn two shocking things.
First, that DC Vote thinks we should rewrite our Constitution so our government can be more like Venezuela’s.
Secondly, that there is a guy who is the United States Senator for the District. I think it is so cute that Washington has a Senator! And, he’s a white former New Yorker!
If you do watch it, let me know what you think. The best part is when 35 seconds in, the narrator asks, “Are things really as they seem?” It’s quite ominous; the shot of birds flying over the head is pure Hitchcock.
22 March 2007 at 11.49 pm · Filed under Political
I’ve been watching the battle over giving Washington, D.C. representation in the United States House of Representatives with some amusement. If you don’t know about this, and you like political arcana, catch up.
As you might know, D.C. license plates proclaim it’s the land of “Taxation Without Representation.” (That’s a great automotive statement easily surpassing New York City’s “Don’t Even Think of Parking Here” signs.) People in Washington think they’re being cheated out of having a Congressman and two Senators, even though they’re free to move to a real State at any time. They do have a non-voting representative, whose sole job seems to be House jester.
People in Utah also feel cheated out of a House seat, too, and they’ve been feeling that way ever since the 2000 census. Why? Because Utah, which has only three representatives, missed the cutoff for a fourth seat by about eight hundred people. They claimed that the Census failed to count Mormon missionaries who were out of the country at the time; they also took issue with a statistical method the Census uses. This bothered them enough to take their case to the Supreme Court, where they lost. (North Carolina has the seat Utah wanted.) This part of the story seems to be missing from the current coverage, and it explains why the Beehive State’s so into this idea.
Fast forward to today. Somebody in Washington (or maybe it was Utah — I’m not sure) got the admittedly savvy idea that if we added one seat for D.C., which would probably go Democrat, we could add one seat for Utah, which would probably go Republican, and keep the balance we have. Everybody wins — Utah’s pacified and Washington’s seat is still as worthless as it is today since it’ll always get canceled out! What a great compromise. (Never mind that it is unconstitutional to add a seats for D.C. — more on that later.)
I read in the Post, however, that yesterday House Republicans attached an amendment to this bill. Now, if the bill passes, the amendment repeals D.C.’s very strict gun laws. This is an even more savvy political move than the original idea, in my view. If liberal Democrats vote for it, hoping to give D.C. its representation, they repeal its gun control laws. Some liberals will now vote against the bill because they’d rather keep the gun control. Realizing this, the Democratic leadership stalled the bill. Now Republicans can say they refused to support the constitutional right to arms.
All this manuevering puts me in the mind of my law review article (which I certainly hope can be described as “forthcoming” someday). I wrote on legislative silliness, and one case in point was LBJ’s 1956 manuevering to get senators from the Pacific Northwest to support an amendment that weakened the civil rights bill so that the South would accept the bill. In exchange for that support, he promised the Northwest his support for a series of federal dams — which actually passed the Senate. The cunning part of this plan was, Johnson’s dam support was worthless because the House never passed the dam bill. The President would probably have vetoed it anyway. It cost nothing to keep his end of the deal, and in exchange, the Northwest gave LBJ his greatest legislative victory.
Republicans have the opportunity to pull the same trick here. Suppose the combined D.C. voting and gun-rights actually passes. It will immediately be challenged by some Republican somewhere, and one of two things will happen. One possibility is the courts will strike down the part of the bill giving D.C. the vote, because D.C.’s not a State and the Constitution gives representation only to States; Utah, however, will probably keep its representative because Congress can change the number of seats at any time. The other possibility is the whole voting part of the bill will go out the window, leaving the gun control repeal on the books. Either way, Republicans win.
I can’t believe Democrats are falling into this trap, except that they are giddy with the intoxication of their big November wins.
The most interesting part of this is why it’s such a big deal for Utah right now. There is another census coming up in three years. At that point, the whole Congressional deck is reshuffled. It would be impossible to predict at this time which State will be in Utah’s position — being the very next in line for a seat, if only the House had room for one more. The thing is, though, there will always be that one State that just didn’t make it. And because of the way the math works, it’s essentially random (but it is always most likely to be California). All this work now, just to get a short-term gain that Utah, with its high growth rate, will almost certainly have outright after 2010 anyway, seems a little late. Where was this idea in 2000?
21 February 2007 at 10.45 pm · Filed under Connextions Lofts, Culture, Political, Random, Work life
Here it is, the famous boldface names entry. Enjoy!
This was the first year in a long time I haven’t been able to issue my usual “Declaration of Spring” to my former counterpart Brian Foster at Nationwide in person. However, the digital version will have to do. Therefore, Brian, it is now Spring! (For the uninitiated, I always decide it’s spring ridiculously early, then complain to people that they’re still wearing their coats. This is to compensate for all the weeks where people tease me about what I’m wearing. Even when it gets back down to zero, I steadfastly maintain that spring has arrived. It’s part of my English stubbornness.)
Yesterday I re-watched The Fog of War, the Oscar-winning documentary about Robert McNamara. It’s surprising how much of that movie is applicable to today’s current Iraq conflict. Based on some of the statements, I doubt McNamara would want to be involved in our war. The most salient part, I thought, was when he told the story of meeting the North Vietnamese at a dinner in the 1990’s. McNamara explains that from the American perspective, the Vietnam War was a cold-war conflict we fought as a proxy. But the Vietnamese, he said, just saw us as the substitute for the French colonialists. The man he talked to said, “You have to think about the war from our perspective. We were never going to give up!” McNamara said that was a fundamental problem with US thinking about the war. I don’t need to spell it out for you — do today’s Iraqis think we’re colonizers rather than liberators?
Speaking of Oscars, I’m still trying to figure out what to wear to local celebrity Kevin Wood’s Oscar party this Sunday. We’ve been told to wear something from the movies, and since my mom threw out my tiara in 1996, I cannot go as The Queen. I hate these costume parties. I always was the person going to Halloween as a fifth-grader or “someone who does not celebrate Halloween.”
My whole life has changed (as previously detailed). I am no longer at Nationwide, so I have whole new adventures and stories to relate (all of which can never be told, sadly, since there’s a thing called confidentiality). I do something new and interesting every day, which I love. My days at the court are nice and contemplative; my days at the law firm are absolutely full. At both places I have baby cases that I can kind of call “mine,” although somebody with a law license actually reads, corrects, and signs everything I turn out. I’m becoming a better writer every week because I am getting constant review and feedback. My life has become so much richer and I feel very confident this was the right thing to do. It’s funny, I don’t even think about Nationwide any more. (I thought I’d be battle-scarred coming out of there, but some days it feels like it never happened.)
Finally, no entry would be complete without a shout out to Jim Fields, who gave us his old bread maker as a last resort in the carb wars. We now turn out oddly-shaped loaves of bread every week. Things are so good these days.
27 April 2006 at 4.21 pm · Filed under Political
I’ve just learned that the Senate may be taking up a proposal that will involve a “$100 gas tax holiday rebate check” going to every family in America. Things are truly getting out of hand when even good Republicans want to solve a problem by throwing money at it.
When were high gas prices ever a problem? I’d love to be snide and say I don’t use gas because I live in the city (and you probably do too if you read this), but that would be unreasonably false. We all depend on oil for all kinds of things, including seeing goods in our pedestrian-friendly stores, buses on our streets, and our precious Amazon and Netflix shipments in the mail. So I won’t play the “city card.”
But high prices send the necessary signal to people: this thing, gas, is precious — don’t use if it you don’t have to. It also sends the right signal to producers: hey, you can make a lot of money if you can sell this stuff. This is exactly how markets are supposed to work! Republicans know better.
If $100 checks really go to families who all spend them solely on gasoline, it will do nothing but further strain the markets. Prices will go up even further because people won’t bear the full cost of consumption and dealers will know people have that extra cash in hand. Of course, I suspect the money will more likely go to general consumption and not be earmarked by anybody for two or three tanks of gas. Meanwhile, the government will have wasted twelve billion dollars.
I vow here and now: if the federal government sends me a check for $100, I will donate it to the transit agency of my choice and not keep a dollar for myself. (If the check is taxable, which would be an amusing farce in itself, then I’ll keep enough money to pay the taxes and donate the rest.)
22 April 2006 at 10.39 pm · Filed under City life, Culture, Political
Today Arnie and I were riding our bikes through the Deaf School Park, enjoying the topiary garden (unfamiliar? click here to visit the “only topiary interpretation of a painting in existence”), when we came across an equally elaborate but less placid tableau.
A drawn, haggard old white guy, dressed horribly in an ugly, too-warm-looking red plaid long-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the top, was sitting on one of the benches. While the upper crust cavorted on the Grande Jatte behind him, three youngish-looking college types used two cameras and two microphones to conduct an “interview.” I have to use quotes around that word because for the whole five or six minutes we were there trying to enjoy the scene, he was continuously and bitterly complaining about the Delaware County Board of Elections and various other “criminals” who had collaborated to throw the 2004 election to George Bush. “Every time I’d call down there, they’d say ‘I only have preliminary results, these could change.’ They sure did!” He didn’t pause to slow down as his ire shifted to various precinct captains who, undoubtedly, must have been in on it too. It was remarkably venomous given the gorgeous temperatures and peaceful setting.
Well, I couldn’t resist giving the college kids a good show and an unscripted moment to include in their documentary as they saw fit, so as we lazily pedaled by I called out, “It’s over! It’s over!” Taken aback but only for a second, the man grunted back, “Yeah, our democracy is over, big deal, right?” I rolled my eyes. (I hope I’m in some new hippie movie!)
What you gonna do. If the election was fraudulent in Ohio, it would have taken the complicity of hundreds of election workers in both parties. Under our laws, the two main parties have equal representation at each county board of elections, and any party representative can challenge the qualifications of any voter. We lost, pal, and most likely fair and square. It’s a beautiful spring day. If you want to do something productive, change your shirt and go stumping for Jim Petro. You still have ten days to make a difference!
Next entries »
