Print Your 4868 Here April 15, 2005January 18, 2017 Thanks to TomPaine.com for this: The Oprah Society By Beth Shulman April 12, 2005 It’s inspiring to watch someone beat the odds. If you see the deck is stacked, their triumph is especially sweet. Day after day, in our made-for-TV society, that’s what we’re shown: inspiring exceptions-women and men who, by some miracle, overcome insurmountable barriers. They often weep as we do when we hear their tales of woe. Indeed, whether it’s addiction or affliction, layoffs or payoffs, their stories are meant to convince us ‘Hey, they made it, why can’t we?’ . . . So a few are chosen, and the rest of us are made to feel like we failed. If only we had tried harder, worked smarter, learned more, invested better, we’d be on TV for all to envy. It’s one thing to admire those who beat the odds, quite another to create a society which makes the odds nearly impossible to overcome. Whatever happened to the Land of Opportunity? To the melting pot that pulled millions from every corner of the world? Drawn by the American Dream, we were told that if you just worked hard, you could support yourself and raise a family, send your children to college, take family vacations, build a nest egg and retire? Today, one in four workers-30 million Americans-hold jobs that pay below $9.00 an hour, putting them and their families below the federal poverty line. The work is often grueling, dangerous or humiliating. Most low-wage jobs lack health care, vacation pay, sick leave or pension plans. They provide little flexibility or training. These jobs sentence child caregivers, janitors and pharmacy techs to a lifetime of poverty, and mock those who work in nursing homes, clean our hotel rooms and offices and process our food. Most of these workers are adults with at least a high school education who have families to take care of just like the rest of us. More and more middle-class jobs are taking on the characteristics of low-wage jobs, with little job security, stagnant wages and decreasing health and retirement benefits. In 1987, employers provided health coverage to 70 percent of workers, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, yet today that number has declined by 10 percent. At the same time, employees are picking up more and more of their health premium costs. Fewer than one-fifth of large and medium-sized companies now pay the full cost of employees’ health premiums. A similar shift has occurred with pensions. Nearly half of full-time workers were covered by traditional pensions 30 years ago. Today, that number has plummeted to below 20 percent. Then there’s job security: the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that today a middle-aged man is likely to be in his job for 71/2 years, down from 11 years just 25 years ago. These conditions are not an act of nature. We can make different choices. We could offer quality child care to give all our kids a fair start. We could insist our jobs provide at least a week of paid sick leave. We could raise the federal minimum wage-as a start to $7.25 an hour, an option our Congress just turned down last month. We could insist every American have affordable health care. We could ensure that every qualified young man and woman can afford to attend college and graduate without mortgaging their future. And at the end of one’s work life, we could make sure that all Americans have enough to support themselves. So what will it be? Will we remain content with a society that rewards the few and continues to erect roadblocks for most Americans, or are we going to live up to the ideals of the American Dream-that if you work hard, you will be able to take care of yourself and your family? The choice is ours. Beth Shulman is the author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans (The New Press, 2003) and works with the Russell Sage Foundation’s The Future of Work and Social Inequality projects. ☞ It’s a matter of balance. I think we had the balance about right in the Clinton/Gore years. Today, we’ve tilted sharply in favor of the best off, and plunged our country dangerously into debt. SAVING FOR A CONDO David Andrusia: ‘I’m saving $ for a condo down payment. Since money market accounts offer such low interest rates these days, any suggestions for a good short-term place to store the dough?’ ☞ Better to keep it safe at 2% than risk losing 30% if things should unravel. This may be why God invented savings accounts. QUICKEN Frank McClendon: ‘I lament (almost) daily that MYM went away. I switched to Quicken a little over two years ago. Quicken stinks. Intuit doesn’t listen. They just do not care about improving their product.’ Brenda Boswell: ‘Linda is right, Quicken on the Mac is really bad. There’s a columnist I follow who, several years ago, helped publish a good Mac (and PC) finance program…do you suppose he could be persuaded to update it?’ ☞ Not a chance. But he still uses it. OH, AND AS ONE MORE PUBLIC SERVICE . . . Click here to print form 4868, the extension to file.
Energy Crisis? What Energy Crisis? April 14, 2005March 1, 2017 President Bush is an oil man. His pappy is an oil man. His VP is an oil man. His pals and his family’s pals are oil men. His virtual brother, Prince Bandar ‘Bush,’ and the Saudi Royal Family generally, to whom the Bushes are closely tied, are oil men. So when you say ‘energy crisis,’ what exactly do you mean? This is a great time to be an oil man! All those guests at the early Cheney energy meetings – the ones whose names the White House would not reveal even after a subpoena from the General Accounting Office? Most of them are likely reveling in this so-called ‘crisis.’ The solution to the ‘crisis,’ according to this administration, is to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, not to promote conservation. Drilling for oil is what oil men DO. Conservation hurts oil men two ways. First, they sell less oil. Second, because of that lessened demand, the oil they do sell fetches a lower price. With oil at $55 a barrel instead of $30, as I have pointed out before, the Saudis are making (roughly) an extra $250 million – extra! – a day. Meanwhile, that other ‘energy crisis’ that came and went – the one in California that was engineered in no small part by Enron (the President’s biggest campaign supporters), as told in The Smartest Guys in the Room – is about to hit the silver screen in a documentary by the same name. Don’t miss the part maybe two-thirds of the way through where the Enron guys come out to confab with Arnold before the recall process gets going. The crisis – which disappeared as soon as the manipulation stopped – sure helped to undermine the governor of the largest Democratic state in the country. My point is, you may think high gasoline or heating oil prices are becoming a hardship. But one man’s crisis is another’s bonanza. It is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America. Have yourself a double latte. STARBUCKS Brendan Segraves: ‘Just a quick confirmation that we’ve had a similar experience with our Starbucks machine (a Digital Italia). The seals busted after three months and they sent us an entirely new machine ($999 retail) instead of making us wait the standard 8-12 weeks to repair the machine. Oh, and the espresso is excellent.’ Jack Rivers: ‘And don’t forget Starbucks pays its workers a fair wage, gives even part time employees health insurance, and supports progressive causes. A Goliath maybe, but definitely not coffee’s version of Wal-Mart.’ Joanna: ‘I’ve never liked their coffee much, but in their defense, I cart off buckets of their used grounds every week for my gardening and composting attempts. Not only do they give me this “gardener’s gold” for free, but they also package the used grounds neatly back into the bags they came in, sealed with a cute sticker telling me what the grounds are good for and how to use them, and set the bag into a basket by the door. I walk in, pick up my bag of free grounds, and leave. And all those bags of grounds end up in my garden instead of in a landfill. I love them.’ ☞ Yes, but even at today’s prices, oil is cheaper.
Apples, Sprouts, and Coffee April 13, 2005March 1, 2017 APPLES Linda Tam: ‘I used to have Quicken 98 on the PC and it was everything I wanted it to be. When I got a PowerMac G5 last July I bought the current Mac Quicken and it’s true, it’s not as nice. Quicken 98 on the PC would make educated guesses about data entry (which were usually correct). For example, when reconciling a bank statement, it would automatically fill in the statement date (guessing based on the last statement date and how long this account usually goes between statements, I guess) – but the version on the Mac makes me fill it in myself. Blah! The point of a Mac (to quote my other favorite Andy blogger, Andy Ihnatko) is to be so awesome that the hair on the back of your neck stands on end. Quicken fails that, and how! I use it anyway, though. Whatcha gonna do?’ SPROUTS Ray Harney: ‘In the Two Thousand Year Old Man routine with Carl Reiner, the following occurs: Q. You’re two thousand years old; how do you look so good? A. Brussels Sprouts. Q. [astonished guffaw] Brussels sprouts? A. That’s right; I never ate them.’ COFFEE This saga comes by way of a retired financier who insists he be identified only as ‘Hal, the Croquet King of Canada.’ I like it because, in the end, it says we Americans sometimes do things right. Grab a mallet or, more appropriately, your morning brew, and off you go. Herewith, writing from Miami, Hal, the Croquet King of Canada: So I woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago, marched to my Krups $99 espresso maker which I’ve had for eons and went to have my morning crack. Sorry, espresso. Flipped it on, it burped, then died. Kaput. I had been expecting its death for weeks, given the random steam shooting out of it at odd times, but I was sad nonetheless. Great opportunity I thought to finally get one of those super-cool-Jetson-looking machines in a fabulous designer color. Orange would be really hot. Or lime green. Or maybe stainless steel. Marched to my IMAC, sitting next to my IPOD, and started to surf the net looking for consumer reviews of the latest and greatest espresso machines. I knew I had found the right spot when I got to coffeegeek.com and saw an online chat taking place regarding ‘Priming Your Pump.’ Scanned the reviews and noted to great dismay that 1) I would have to fork out at least $400 for something half decent and 2) Starbucks ‘Barrista’ kept getting rave reviews. Starbucks? Forget it. They are the enemy. I hate the fact that they have made a mockery of the simple ritual of great espresso (cappuccino for breakfast, espresso any other time) and turned it into a half-decaf/half-soy/low-foam-vanilla-moccacino experience. Not to mention that I would have to chisel off the Starbucks label emblazoned across the front of the machine and even worse, a 1-800 number on the water tank. Never. So I decided to go for the #2-rated machine – some super-duper Italian number with levers, spouts, and knobs that would clearly look to my friends as though I had hauled it back from my last trip to Positano. And it was orange. Hot. It arrived a week later. I opened the box and it looked as if it had been dropped off the back of a pickup and driven over. Twice. There was a sliver of bubble wrap and two foam chips. And it had been shipped like this from Italy. Please. It went back. Back to coffeegeek.com. This time the chat was about ‘Crema and Water Hardness.’ Hot. Picked the 3rd rated machine – again from Italy with lots of bells and whistles, but in stainless steel. Not so hot, but at this point I really needed my damn coffee. It arrived a week later. Foam chips were peeking out of the corners of the box so I felt confident. It was perfect. Set it up and then attempted to interpret the half Italian/half Spanish/half French manual. I gave up and just fired it up. All I could get was steam. And occasionally some light brown fluid. It went back. Now I was desperate. I needed my espresso. I was going through withdrawal and it wasn’t pretty. My housekeeper insisted she could put masking tape over the Starbucks label if I got that machine. Esthetics are not her forte. I relented and trudged down to the local Starbucks, wearing my designer shades in case any of my friends saw me. Walked up to the counter and asked to buy a ‘Barrista’ – how faux-Italian is that! Ughh! The young lass behind the counter said, ‘Just a moment, Sir; I’ll get the manager.’ Two seconds later, a perky young thing bounds out the swinging door and says, ‘Sir, I’m the manager and I hear you want to buy a Barrista – do you have five minutes by any chance?’ What the heck, I thought, just give me the damn machine before the meter runs out. But I smiled and said, ‘Of course’. So she hauls me behind the swinging door and takes me back to where she’s got one of the machines all set up, unpacked, plugged in with a pitcher of frosty fresh milk sitting next to it. She then proceeds to teach me step by step how to use the damn thing, steam the milk, clean it, descale it in case my water was hard (aha!) and prime the pump (aha!!). Then she asked me how I like my espresso and made me a cup. One of the best I’ve ever had. Then she tells me about the two-year return policy, about how she’s giving me $150 off because they’re about to have a sale, and then insists on carrying it to my car for me in the hot Miami sun. I love her. I want her to bear my children. The thing makes the best espresso I’ve ever had (other than that little café in Positano). I am willing to put Starbucks bumper stickers on my car. I am a convert. And I didn’t put masking tape over the name.
A Grand Time and a Grand Bargain April 12, 2005March 1, 2017 A GRAND TIME TO BE RICH AND POWERFUL IN AMERICA According to this in the L.A. Times, worker pay for the last 14 months has trailed inflation. In real dollars, workers have taken a tiny pay cut. But not to worry: In the same time frame, corporate profits hit record highs . . . and the tax rate on dividends paid out of those profits has been slashed by 62% since President Bush took office. (I know some of you think relatively little cash is involved, but $441 billion was paid out in personal dividends in 2004, most of it to those already best off.) The most outspokenly religious president in our history, Bush’s unique interpretation of Christ’s philosophy is to cut programs for the poor while slashing taxes for the rich. Which brings to mind a quote one of you kindly sent in: ‘A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.’ – Aristotle Which brings to mind another quote one of you kindly sent me: ‘Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.’ – Lt. Gen. William Boykin; New York Times, 17 October 2003 Not to say I believe President Bush is a tyrant (or sent by God). But he and the Republican leadership have unquestionably tilted the playing field even more heavily in favor of the best off. A GRAND BARGAIN And if you think religion and economic policy are unrelated in America, consider this (thanks, Gary). It holds that the religious right has agreed to support the President’s Social Security ‘reform’ in exchange for his pushing harder for the Federal Anti-Gay-Marriage Amendment. In part (from Americans United for Separation of Church and State): . . . the Religious Right leaders of the Arlington Group are playing hardball politics and have cast aside concerns about the economic well-being of citizens reliant on Social Security in order to score a big political victory – passage of a constitutional amendment to prevent legal recognition of gay marriage. If it seems callous to jeopardize the social safety net (and borrow trillions of dollars from the next generation) simply to be certain Charles and I can’t have the same rights other couples do – hang on. At least some men of the cloth have come up with the rationale: Douglas Barker, a Baptist pastor in Alexandria, Va., writing the series for BP News, argued that Social Security had weakened or undermined churches’ roles in helping the poor and elderly. Barker insisted that it is ‘disturbing’ that so many Christian leaders, citing scripture, supported the formation of Social Security when it began in the ’30s. ‘Yes, government has a role in protecting its citizens, but it should never come at the expense of the church abdicating its biblically mandated role,’ Barker wrote Feb. 9.
90% off the Philharmonic April 11, 2005March 1, 2017 A NEAT THING TO DO WHEN YOU COME TO NEW YORK You could attend a performance of the New York Philharmonic in terrific seats for $150 each . . . or you could click here to attend an open rehearsal of the same performance for $15. You might even have an open seat next to you, to sprawl out a little. The friend who tipped me off to this says that the rehearsal often plays right through, with few or no do-overs . . . and that, of course, the do-overs themselves can be interesting. Not to say it’s so terribly romantic to attend a concert at nine forty-five in the morning. But – don’t kill me for saying this – I never thought attending one at eight p.m. was so romantic, either. I HAVE THE SMARTEST READERS Patti: ‘The text-wrap problem you had Friday came from the use of the tag for ‘preformatted text’ in your HTML. This tag preserves spaces and line breaks. That is, if the text you paste in does not have line breaks, it won’t let the browser break them either. Click here for more. I copied the source code for your web page, and did a global search and replace in my copy, replacing ‘pre’ with ‘p’ (the paragraph tag). Text wrap worked fine after that.’ ☞ Thanks, Patti! You’re a hero and a genius and I think I actually knew this several years ago, from when it happened once before (who knows why?), but long since forgot. THANK YOU! MAC VS PC Don Hurter (noting Friday’s text-wrap problem): ‘Don’t take this as a slam against you or Microsoft. But you really owe it to yourself to at least borrow a Macintosh for a few weeks and see how the other side lives.’ ☞ One very smart friend of mine DID recently switch to a PowerBook – loves much about it – but is now buying a new Dell laptop. I was surprised. He said: “The Macintosh is terrific, but the software for it just isn’t as good.” Quicken for the Mac was terrible compared with Quicken for Windows, he said, and Mac’s equivalent of Outlook just wasn’t as good. So it’s not all one-sided – maddening as PCs and Windows can be. WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL President Bush and I went to the same B-school three years apart. We likely had a couple of the same professors. I missed Yoshi Tsurumi, however, who wrote this last week for the Harvard Crimson. In part: Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt a ‘socialist’ and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints. . . . Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era. Bush is the first president of the United States with an MBA. Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.
Compassion April 9, 2005March 1, 2017 No, the President doesn’t live in Iowa City. The satellite photo I linked you to was not even the Vice President’s famed ‘undisclosed location.’ The URL didn’t change when I changed the street address. You need to link here to see the White House roof. WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? Clare: ‘My eyes have just opened! I’m reading about Peru in preparation for touring there and came across an observation about the ‘Shining Path’ guerillas, who apparently ‘hated the educated elites’ and executed them at any opportunity. By chance, the next day I came across a picture of the big Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban is contemptuous of the ‘educated elites.’ Then I happened upon a reference to China’s ‘cultural revolution.’ When, of course, the ‘educated elites’ were persecuted. Hmm… Are the conservatives who are so contemptuous of America’s educated elites learning their rhetoric and tactics from these radical sources?’ ☞ Who knows where Karl Rove draws his inspiration? But I do think those of us who do think we’re so smart need to do a much better job of listening. That doesn’t mean changing what we believe, but perhaps learning to express it better. For example, I would venture to say we are almost ALL pro-life. Who isn’t? But that while most of us would be troubled by abortions, we don’t think the state should come between a woman and her doctor in this very personal, often agonizing decision. We understand not everyone agrees with us, and we respect their views. It’s hard to look at a sonogram and not respect those views. (For a long time, Democrats have said abortion should be safe, legal, and RARE. But we need to do a better job letting people know that abortions fell under Clinton, have gone back up under Bush. Which administration was more pro-life? And of letting people know we really do respect their points of view, as Bill Clinton did. One reason: it’s the right thing to do. Second reason: we might lose the Evangelical vote 63-37, as in 1996, instead of 79%-21%, as in 2004.) WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH THE NEW BANKRUPTCY LAW Ed Biebel: ‘I saw this story from Goizueta Business School At Emory University on how the changes in the bankruptcy laws may adversely affect entrepreneurial spirit. The article takes a balanced position and makes no final argument one way or another. But it does raise some interesting points that I didn’t know about how many businesses are financed personally. I think something that hurts small business can spell real trouble for the country.’ ☞ And after the extraordinary compassion for Terri Schiavo, it does seem odd not to allow exemptions for legitimate hardships like, say, catastrophic medical expenses. Speaking of which . . . THE COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM JUST KEEPS COMING In case you missed this April 1 ‘Open Letter to President Bush and Congress From Two Americans with Disabilities’: Republicans are pulling “the wheelchair out from under the child with muscular dystrophy.” A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION by Anne Lindsay and Rod DeVaul Dear President Bush, Governor Jeb Bush, Members of the House of Representatives, and Members of the Senate: Like most Americans, we have been listening intently to your comments about Terry Schiavo and persons with disabilities. We’re delighted that you’re focusing your attention on disability issues and hope that you will continue to do so. While we have your attention, we thought we would take this opportunity to bring some issues that are pertinent to millions of Americans with disabilities and all of those who could join our ranks any day. Mr. President, Rep. DeLay, Sen. Frist, Rep. Hastert, Rep. Sensenbrenner and other members of the House and Senate, we are perplexed by the contradictions in your statements and your actions. While you showboat about protecting people with disabilities and America’s “most vulnerable” citizens, you simultaneously have tried to cut funding for Medicaid, cut medical benefits & long-term care for veterans, medical services for children, and programs that provide housing for low-income persons with disabilities. These are just some of the inconsistencies over the years that all of you have been in office. Republican legislators who have been most vocal and central to pushing the “Palm Sunday Compromise” through opposed Sen. Smith’s 2006 budget amendment to preserve the Medicaid cuts proposed by President Bush. Fortunately, seven Republican senators who understood what this would mean to people with disabilities and the growing number of Americans with no health coverage bucked you in the Senate. Republican leaders in the House are pushing for even more Medicaid cuts, over double the amount proposed by President Bush. Governor Huckabee said of your attempts to cut health care for the poor and Americans with disabilities, “You don’t pull the wheelchair out from under the child with muscular dystrophy.” Yet that is exactly what your heartless cuts would do. Governor Bush, despite all of your grandstanding on behalf of Terry Schaivo, you originally submitted a budget that cut the Medically Needy program that supports 36,000 catastrophically ill Floridians and also called for cuts to prescription coverage for poor citizens who cannot afford to pay for their prescription medications, as well as other proposed cuts to the Florida Medicaid program. We note that all of you did this while continuing to support tax cuts for the wealthy. Terry Shiavo’s medical care has been supported both by Medicaid and by the malpractice lawsuit she won. Not only have you attempted to cut Medicaid, you sided with insurance companies and against American citizens hurt by malpractice when you forced through limits on malpractice suits. Where would Terry Schiavo be now if she hadn’t won that suit? If she was in Texas, where then Governor Bush signed a law allowing the state to withdraw life support against the family’s wishes, we suspect this would be a very different kind of debate. The number of Americans without health coverage grows daily. The Institute of Medicine estimates that lack of health insurance results in approximately 18,000 deaths per year. Where is your outrage there? What are you doing about it? Terry Schiavo is one woman in a tragic situation. Just due to your failure to effectively address the health care crisis in our country, there are 18,000 Americans dead each year, with the number to grow as you wage your battles on Americans with illnesses and disabilities. We are the only industrialized country to deny its citizens health care. Why is that? You proclaim that we are the greatest, richest country in the world — why is it that we cannot provide this basic service to our citizens? President Bush, since you took office, five million people have lost their health care coverage and yet you continue to side with big business insurance & drug companies. Where is your outrage? Many of the people who have no coverage thanks to your inaction will die. Others will suffer medical events that leave children and adults disabled, some very like Terry Schiavo. What do you intend to do about our health care to prevent all of this from happening? And at the same time more and more Americans are denied health care you push through bills that are detrimental to our health. While we lose access to health care, we breathe increasingly polluted air, our water is fouled, our greenhouse gases are increasingly uncontrolled, nutritional and other wellness programs for children are under-funded or cut, our gun culture causes thousands of deaths needlessly in this country, and you push to destroy increasing amounts of our country and other countries in the pursuit of polluting oil while you fail to finance alternative energy programs. What will you do about all of the Americans who will become ill due to your anti-environmental programs? Will each of them get the same attention you have poured on Terry Schiavo? Mr. President, your insistence that our leaders “always err on the side of life” is contrary to your actions in Texas when you signed into law a bill that allows withdrawal of life support against a family’s wishes and in America where you have consistently failed to address the true crisis in our country — the lack of appropriate health care for millions upon millions of our citizens, disabled or not. You proposed a cutback of $60 billion of federal contributions to Medicaid over the next ten years, which James McCartney noted in the Bradenton Herald noted was the “largest cutbacks for any program in [your] budget.” People will become disabled and will die due to those cuts, Mr. President. How does that square with your statement that we should “always err on the side of life?” Sincerely, Anne Lindsay (NC) and Rod DeVaul (TN) ☞ Before you write to note that some of these ‘cuts’ may only be cuts in program growth, please note also that as the country’s population grows and prices rise, you do cut programs if their budgets don’t keep pace. Technically, it could be true to say ‘not one single solitary penny has been cut’ from such-and-such program. But if the population has increased 10% (say) and prices another 20%, a nominally constant budget is indeed a sharp cut.
Compassion April 8, 2005January 19, 2017 Oops. Click here to see today’s column. Sorry for the extra step.
And the Winner for the Best Economy Is . . . April 7, 2005March 1, 2017 Everyone else on this 757 is annoyed. Not me. I am . . . thrilled. We are at the gate, well past our departure time. The captain has explained that the truck that came to back us out of our gate somehow broke the tow-bar that pulls the plane. They are off searching for another tow bar, and a mechanic has been dispatched to inspect the nose wheel for damage. Things should be fine, but we now expect to arrive in New York an hour late. I am so happy I can hardly stand it. First, although I failed to get upgraded, there is no one sitting next to me in an otherwise packed plane. Pure bliss. Second, we will now not land in New York State until after midnight – until the next day, technically speaking. I won’t go into the whole sordid tale, but let’s just say that the New York City Department of Finance and I have a longstanding, cordial but frosty relationship. I love New York, I pay lots of taxes to New York, but . . . well, someday, if you’ve been particularly bad, I will force you to hear the full story as your punishment.* But third, and mainly, I take this as an omen (yes, it has come to this; I am now grasping at omens) . . . specifically, an omen that the much heralded Borealis-owned subsidiary that claims to have an electric motor that will allow pilots to drive their jets around the tarmac like golf carts – that will allow them to back up from their gates unassisted – just might prove out. Supposedly, this is the month the test will be performed. I assume the test will be postponed, delayed, or – somehow – inconclusive. Or just outright fail. Not to assume the worst is to set oneself up for terrible disappointment; for, as I have explained at great length, in case this company’s claims do pan out, even a little, I will no longer have to save soap slivers. I might even, on occasion, buy a first class ticket rather than hope for the upgrade. (Well, no I wouldn’t; but you get my drift.) To be sure, ‘omens’ are nowhere covered in Graham & Dodd. No investor I know (or pharaoh, for that matter) has ever profited in any significant way from omens. But you’re not going to talk me down from this high. We will be landing in 45 minutes. *Suffice it to say that New York requires me to prove each year how many days I spend there (or, more accurately, do not spend there). And if I come for dinner and leave on the 6am shuttle – a total of 12 hours – that counts as two full days. THOSE WERE THE DAYS Howard W.: ‘You have mentioned a few times how economic conditions tend to be better under Democrats. Michael Kinsley’s current column in the Los Angeles Times supports your assertion.’ Democratic Superiority, by the Numbers By Michael Kinsley Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page B07 It was the TV talker Chris Matthews, I believe, who first labeled Democrats and Republicans the “Mommy Party” and the “Daddy Party.” Archaic as these stereotypes may be, they do capture general attitudes about the two parties. But we live in the age of the one-parent family, and it is Mom more often than Dad who must play both roles. It has not escaped notice that the Daddy Party has been fiscally misbehaving. But it hasn’t really sunk in how completely Republicans have abandoned allegedly Republican values — if in fact they ever really had such values. Our text today is the statistical tables of the 2005 Economic Report of the President. I did this exercise a while back with the 2004 tables and couldn’t quite believe the results. But the 2005 data confirm it: The party with the best record of serving Republican economic values is the Democrats. It isn’t even close. The Republican values I refer to are universal. We all want prosperity, oppose unemployment, dislike inflation, don’t enjoy paying taxes, etc. These values are Republican only in the sense that Republicans are supposed to treasure them more and to be more reluctant to sacrifice them for other goals such as equality and clean air. Statistics back to 1959 make this clear. A consistent pattern over 45 years cannot be explained by shorter-term factors, such as war or who controls Congress. Maybe presidents can’t affect the economy much, but the assumption that they can and do is so prominent in Republican rhetoric that they are stuck with it. So consider: Federal spending (aka “big government”): It has gone up an average of about $50 billion a year under presidents of both parties. But that breaks down as $35 billion a year under Democratic presidents and $60 billion under Republicans. If you assume that it takes a year for a president’s policies to take effect, Democrats have raised spending by $40 billion a year and Republicans by $55 billion. Leaning over backward even farther, let’s start our measurement in 1981, the date when many Republicans believe that life as we know it began. The result: Democrats still have a better record at smaller government. Republican presidents added more government spending for each year they served, whether you credit them with the actual years they served or with the year that followed. Federal revenue (aka taxes): You can’t take it away from them: Republicans do cut taxes. Or rather, tax revenue goes up under both parties but about half as fast under Republicans. It’s the only test of Republican economics that the Republicans win. That is, they win if you consider lower federal revenue to be a victory. Sometimes Republicans say that cutting taxes will raise government revenue by stimulating the economy. And sometimes they say that lower revenue is good because it will lead (by some mysterious process) to lower spending. The numbers in the Economic Report of the President undermine both theories. Spending goes up faster under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. And the economy grows faster under Democrats than Republicans. What grows faster under Republicans is debt. Under Republican presidents since 1960, the federal deficit has averaged $131 billion a year. Under Democrats, that figure is $30 billion. In an average Republican year, the deficit has grown by $36 billion. In the average Democratic year it has shrunk by $25 billion. The national debt has gone up more than $200 billion a year under Republican presidents and less than $100 billion a year under Democrats. As for measures of general prosperity, each president inherits the economy. What counts is what happens next. Let’s take just two measures, although they all show the same thing: Democrats do better under every variation. From 1960 to 2005 the gross domestic product measured in year-2000 dollars rose an average of $165 billion a year under Republican presidents and $212 billion a year under Democrats. Measured from 1989, or measured with a one-year delay, or both, the results are similar. And how about this one? The average annual rise in real per capita income — that’s the statistic that puts money in your pocket. Democrats score about 30 percent higher. Democratic presidents have a better record on inflation (averaging 3.13 percent compared with 3.89 percent for Republicans) and on unemployment (5.33 percent versus 6.38 percent). Unemployment went down in the average Democratic year, up in the average Republican one. Almost forgot: If you start in 1981 and if you factor in a year’s delay, Republican presidents edge out Democratic ones on inflation, 4.57 to 4.36. Congratulations. ☞ Michael is missing the point. Things are much better under Republican administrations if you’re rich and powerful. Blessed are the mega-rich, who save $246,000 in taxes on every $1 million of dividends. Seen in that light – never mind this year’s $700 billion deficit – the Republican leadership has done the citizenry proud.
Viewing Your Roof from Outer Space April 6, 2005March 1, 2017 PERSPECTIVE Here’s the President’s house, as seen from outer space. (Be sure to click the + sign a couple of times to enlarge it, and push the map up with your mouse to center it.) Type in your own address to see your own roof the same way. Only smaller, I should think. CYBEVERAGE And as if that topographical Google treat were not enough, it looks as if my Peach Oo-la-long Honest Tea has competition from Google as well. (Could this link have only worked on April 1? No, still seems to be up.) CLEVER MARKETING Click here. A more effective way to sell books than the same money spent on a print ad? Happy Passover, in any event. EVEN BETTER BUY Ed Biebel: ‘It looks as if rebates may be nearing the end. Business Week says Best Buy is ending rebates after listening to consumer complaints. The cynic in me wonders if it has less to do with making the customer happy than with the lawsuit that the Ohio AG filed against them.’ THE BALANCE ‘Capitalism tries for a delicate balance. It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.’ – George Carlin THE BUBBLE Ernest Ostrander: ‘In parts of the country where the bubble isn’t in prices, it may be inventory. My house in Memphis is currently for sale. Since banks will lend money to anyone with lint in his pockets, my nice neighborhood is being acquired by first time home buyers. They get their down payment and closing costs paid by grant programs (with no income restrictions), and if a seller wants to have any hope of selling, he must pay points toward the buyer’s loan. I’ve been told by my realtor and neighbors that if I don’t pay the full 6 points allowed by law, I’ll never sell. After paying a 7% commission plus 6 points and some closing costs to sell, I’ll be lucky to have a 10% gain after 13 years in this house. And of course, when the new owners want to move, it’s likely that they’ll just walk away. After all, they’ll have to pay over $15k out of pocket to sell, if they get an interest-only loan. I seem to recall, from about 15 or 20 years ago, economist Lester Thurow citing the Japanese asking when our nation would quit borrowing so much money, and that he replied by asking when they’d wake up and quit lending it to us. A good question for our own banks!’ Trisha: ‘In San Diego – where we live – you can rent a nice but not spectacular two-bedroom apartment for over 1800/month . . . or you can buy down the street new condos in the $460K-$480K range, paying an additional $55/mth school, $183 homeowners’ association fee, and 1.04% taxes – this is for the smallest 1226 sq ft unit! There are more condos being built diagonally across the road from these. If I recall correctly, they cost around $400K and up, but the homeowners’ association fees are much, much higher. ‘The thing is, even if you have a zero % loan to pay for the house, the monthly payments are huge, and way out of proportion to what people earn. It has been beyond me how people have found the money to pay each month for several years now. Still, most people clearly do. ‘Prices are so damned high here that crappy old condo complexes – 100% occupied by renters – are being sold to the occupants and this isn’t just happening at one or two complexes, but quite a few of them. Some of them don’t really have adequate ventilation, and thus are susceptible to mold because you can’t open all the windows and get a breeze through. As a renter, you can just move out when you’ve had enough, the maintenance people slap on some new paint, and – boom – no mold problem. Some of the units don’t have enough parking spaces because the intention was one unit, one family, not three or four college kids doing whatever they needed to, to make the rent. ‘Real estate companies likely wouldn’t be selling those rental condo complexes as units if they thought that they were going to keep on going up in value. It is this more than anything else in our insane situation which makes me think prices will stop going higher. I used to think prices might fall – but I’m sick of being wrong.’
Maureen Dowd on Curveball (In Case You Missed It) April 5, 2005March 1, 2017 But first . . . HOW OLD WILL YOU BE IN 2035? Mark McMahon: ‘I am currently investing monthly in the Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Fund as a way to supplement a pension. Are you familiar with this fund and if so would you recommend it for someone who wants a decent return and a hands-off approach?’ ☞ Vanguard is always a good choice because of its low expenses and high integrity. And monthly investing, in the long run – whatever economic calamities may occur along the way – is a great way to attain financial security. LA BUBBLE In small part: When the price of houses in California soared 17% in 2003 and 22% in 2004, a curious thing happened: Instead of home ownership decreasing because fewer people could afford houses, it rose to record levels . . . Confronted with soaring home prices, Californians are adopting a “buy now, pay later” strategy on a massive scale. The boom in interest-only loans – nearly half the state’s home buyers used them last year, up from virtually none in 2001- is the engine behind California’s surging home prices. But all that borrowed money might be living on borrowed time. When higher bills start coming due, Herron and hundreds of thousands of other homeowners in the state will have to find ways to cope – or will have to sell. In the most dire scenario, if they owe more on the home than it’s worth, they’ll simply walk away. Abundant foreclosures could spark a downturn in the entire housing market, leading to the long-feared bursting of what some call a housing bubble. . . . “If you can fog a mirror, you can get a home loan,” said mortgage analyst Ralph DeFranco. SCALLOPS John Lemon: ‘Just wanted to say that, as miserable as I have frankly been over the past seven months (what with the election and getting cancer and all – not sure which was worse) I recently experienced a moment of unadulterated ecstasy thanks to your wonderful scallop recipe. I guess while our civil rights are being eroded, the environment is being pillaged and the nation itself becomes increasingly isolated and vulnerable, I can take solace in being able to afford a pound of bi-valve delicacies once a week. It is indeed a grand time to be rich and powerful in America.’ And now . . . CURVEBALL Here is why each member of your family has already spent more than $1,000 attacking and occupying Iraq . . . each American’s share of an enterprise whose goals, with better planning and management, could have been achieved at a small fraction of the cost in cash and human tragedy. It turns out that in deciding to launch this effort before we were ready, we relied on one drunk we whom we knew to be highly suspect. And lost the goodwill of much of the world in the process. Ah, but those scallops!