21. September 2008 by admin.

We’re told the John McCain, the Republican candidate for President, is a ‘maverick’ who won’t necessarily follow the traditional Republican orthodoxy, and a ‘reformer’ who will stop corruption. After eight years of Our Fearless Leader, it sounds like a refreshing change. But is it?

McCain was long known as a hell-raiser who wanted his own way. In the Naval Academy, he graduated near the bottom of his class, not so much for poor grades, but for accruing large numbers of demerits for breaking the rules. Nobody has said this, but I will: could it be that the flippant and careless attitude that he had towards the Academy rules carried forward to his active duty, and was part of the reason he was captured by the enemy?

In 2000, McCain ran a moderate Republican candidate, and was derailed in one of the early primaries, in South Carolina, by an aggressive smear campaign. In early 2001, he even contemplated leaving the Republican party. But since then, he has followed the Republican line very closely. Today, despite the ‘maverick’ persona, he is a clone of Our Fearless Leader in terms of his actual decisions.

Through 2007 and early 2008, his candidacy for President seemed moribund, but then it was suddenly resuscitated. Perhaps the Republican leadership realized that there would be a backlash in their base against voting for a Mormon (Romney), and that they would have difficulty getting swing voters to go for a former preacher (Huckabee). McCain still had the glow of being a contrarian, even though he wasn’t any more, and he’s old, and could be expected to delegate much of the work of being President to his subordinates.

As far has his actual tendencies as a reformer, he is against ‘pork-barrel’ politics, where politicians get money voted for their favorite projects. It’s the closest that one can come to legally sticking one’s hand in the cookie jar of public money, and it’s odious.

Until you consider the alternative. In the wake of the initial destruction of the Iraq war, we spent billions of dollars to rebuild the place. As a practical matter, we had the moral responsibility to do that after busting the place up. Since there is no Congressional district that covers Iraq, this was not an instance of pork. No one stood up in Congress and said that Baghdad needed a new generator for its airport.

Instead, the money was dished out through an army of bureaucrats, without clear guidelines. Large firms with political ties snared the biggest contracts. Phantom contractors appeared to take the money and run. (I missed my calling: why do I have to work hard to function as a real contractor in New York City, when I could have easily been a fake one in Iraq?) Much of the work was poorly constructed, and over half the money was effectively pissed away, with nothing to show for it.

And this is better than pork-barrel spending…how?

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20. September 2008 by admin.

This past week saw great upheavals in the economy as the great investment banks and brokerage firms either collapsed in bankruptcy or were hastily sold off to more solvent institutions. AIG, a large insurance company, was bought out by the Feds midweek.

The stock market lurched up and down through the week, and late Thursday, the government announced a plan to buy upwards of a half trillion (that’s ‘trillion’ with a ‘t’) dollars of bad mortgages. And somehow, that made things all better: the market went up on Friday, and ended the week only a tick down.

Whew, that was close, but now it’s over. Or is it?

On one level, it makes sense: if we’re able to function with a national debt of $10 trillion, upping it to $10.5T or even $11T is only an incremental change.

But for the government to pump all that money into the economy in a short time will almost certainly be inflationary. No: it is inflationary, by definition. But the question is: has the economy been thirsting for cash for so long that the money will bring things into balance, or will prices shoot up as a result?

At best, we’ll get ourselves back to where we were perhaps two years ago, before the ‘housing crisis’ manifested itself. But I doubt that we will go back anytime soon to what we recognize as prosperity: where almost everyone who was physically and mentally able could find a job that paid a living wage and left one the time and energy to enjoy the non-work aspects of life.

This is because, in the view of the MBAs who run things, paying an employee more than is strictly necessary to keep him, or hiring more employees than will barely get the job done, represents wasted money and a lapse of profitability. And they continue to believe this, even though they are not exempt from their own bean counting: they can’t see what it’s doing to themselves.

An infusion of taxpayer funds won’t change that. And even the choice of the next President won’t change it, either.

Posted in Money | No Comments »

15. September 2008 by admin.

Seven years ago last Thursday, Islamic terrorists in hijacked jetliners destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and brought the War on Terror upon us.  And so we remember the dead, pray for the living, and moan about the crappy replacements the politicians are serving up to replace the majestic Twin Towers and the glacial pace of their progress.

And then what?

We’re supposed to be intelligent: when some problem befalls us, we’re supposed to study it, learn from it, and do better in the future.

An article of faith among conservatives seems to be that we were the innocent victims of the 11 September attacks.  Obama, and the Democrats in general, are full of self-hatred when they declare that we brought it on ourselves.

As a gross approximation, it’s probably accurate to say that we were innocent victims that fateful day.  But the fact is that we, the United States, built Osama bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, and we built Saddam Hussein to fight the Iranians.   While we were indeed victims, we were not quite as innocent as we’d like to imagine.

And since we’re not that innocent, we should have been more careful.  The signs were there that something was afoot: the President was briefed a month earlier that bin Laden was potentially preparing to attack us.  Now the report didn’t say that he would have his henchmen hijack airplanes on 11 September and fly them into things, but a word to the wise is sufficient.

But then again, one could plausibly believe that our leadership wanted the attacks of 11 September to take place, for their own political ends.  But in that case, in the long run, the responsibility for addressing this abuse of power lies not with our leadership, but with ourselves: we still have a representative government, and we still have the right to vote.

And it certainly seems possible that our leadership wanted the terrorist attacks to happen as a pretext not only for war, but also for curtailing our civil rights and for torture.  Yes, it’s a new kind of war and a new kind of enemy.  But I’d like to believe that we’re better than such things.

But maybe we’re not.

And maybe that’s what I have to learn.

Posted in World Trade Center, Life Goes On, Terrorism | No Comments »

14. September 2008 by admin.

Like everyone else with half a brain in this country, I’ve been looking at the Presidential candidates and trying to decide whom I should vote for in November.

I’ve started with the premise, among others, that Iraq is off the table as an issue.  There is an agreement in place with the Iraqi government on how we will withdraw our forces over time, and while the initial decision to go to Iraq was a spectacularly bad judgement, neither of the present candidates was specifically responsible for it.

The Democrats are running Barack Obama, a wonderful orator with big plans for how the government will help us.  He grants that these plans will cost money, and proposes to pay for them by eliminating tax loopholes for businesses, and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.  His approach to foreign policy emphasizes the use of diplomacy over military force.

The Republicans are running John McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war who has the vibe of being a ‘maverick.’  On the other hand, his actual votes in the Senate track very closely the Bush administration’s desires.  He wants to keep the tax cuts and considers the world a dangerous place, where the use of force is a real consideration.

Part of me really wants to vote for McCain.  I believe that he has better judgement than Bush, I don’t like taxes (who does?), and I’m genuinely skeptical of big government plans to help people, because I’ve seen them backfire.

On the other hand, a government, like a household or a company, has to take in enough money to maintain itself and do the things it does.  And maintaining a strong military and being prepared to use it aren’t cheap.  Moreover, I don’t buy into the thought that lowering tax rates will stimulate economic activity to the point where the government will take in more money than if it had left taxes alone: if taxes were oppressively high, as they were a generation ago, it might be true, but not now.

In the second quarter of 2008, the US economy grew by 2.1%, so that we can officially say that we’re not in a recession, but shed over 500,000 jobs. Who wins and who loses when that happens?

And what good does it do to make ourselves safe from terrorists if most of us end up worse off in terms of our daily standard of living, in a country that is becoming no longer the land of opportunity?

McCain will do nothing to stop this.  Obama will at least try.

For this reason, despite my misgivings, I’ve decided to vote for Barack Obama in the next election.

But God help us, either way….

Posted in John McCain, Presidential election, Barack Obama | No Comments »

13. September 2008 by admin.

I set up a Simple IRA plan at my business, and my first contribution went through this week: $504.

If I’m able to keep that up, every two weeks, that’s about $13,000/year, and I’ll be a millionaire in 76 years.  OK: that’s not quite realistic; it doesn’t consider the magic of compound interest.  So it’ll take maybe thirty-something years.

But I’ll be an old man by then, and before that, the government will insist that I start making withdrawals.  Moreover, by then, a million dollars will probably be half a month’s rent.
Still, I have to at least try,

*          *          *

The electric bill arrived yesterday, and I actually felt good about it before I opened it.

During the winter, our monthly electric bill is typically $70-80.  We have a modest apartment in terms of size, and although we don’t make any great efforts to be ‘green,’ we try not to be too wasteful.

The July bill was for about $165, and reflected the first month of heavy air-conditioner use,  This was in line with past years, so it didn’t really bother me.

Then the August bill came in at $220, a new record.  We had gotten lazy, and in particular, on some days I just wanted to sit in front of the air conditioner and not do anything.   I told my wife and son about the bill, and we all made some effort to reduce our use.  Moreover, the worst of the summer heat had passed.

So when I opened the bill this morning, I expected that it would be in the $120-130 range.  But no: it was $195.  We used 15% less electricity than in the July bill, but will have to pay 18% more.

Posted in Money | No Comments »

10. September 2008 by admin.

While on the campaign trail, Barack Obama remarked, with regard to the Republican effort to appear as reformers, “You can put lipstick on a pig, and it’s still a pig.”

The Republicans took the remark as a slur against their Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who remarked that she was a ‘pit bull with lipstick’ in her speech last week.  Obama’s remarks made the front page in today’s papers.

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.  But wouldn’t it be nice if we could get past this silly stuff and actually discuss the issues?

Posted in Sarah Palin, Presidential election, Barack Obama | No Comments »

7. September 2008 by admin.

My wife asked me to join her in the Labor Day parade today, which this year was held yesterday, the Saturday after Labor Day.  She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild.  My previous time in the parade was in 1982, when I was a newly-minted member of the Transport Workers Union.

The announcement from SAG indicated that the first 25 members to show up would get a free T-shirt.  My wife and I arrived late, but she was #18 on the list, and even though I’m not a member, I got one too.  I’m not an actor: I just play one for the Labor Day parade.

Tropical Storm Hanna,  which had threatened to douse the city all day, held off until mid-afternoon.  It didn’t rain, but it was really, really muggy.  Still, it was a festive occasion, walking up Fifth Avenue.

However, there were very few spectators.  Along the 28 blocks, there were perhaps a couple of hundred people who seemed to be actually watching the parade.  Foot traffic on Fifth Avenue was about normal for late on a Saturday morning,  In recent years, interest in the parade has flagged: is it that the parade didn’t take place on Labor Day (and why is that?), loss of interest in labor unions, or that parades aren’t enough of a public spectacle to hold a crowd anymore?  (When I was with the Transport Workers in 1982, it was really on Labor Day, and there were a good few thousand spectators.)

Many of the parade participants wore Obama for President buttons, and Obama posters appeared on some of the floats.  Of course, Barack Obama, as the Democratic candidate, is favored by the labor unions because he proposes to use government to help the working people.

And why not?  Over the last eight years, we’ve seen the Bush administration use the power of government to favor big business and the wealthy.  He cut taxes and then embroiled us in an expensive war.  He promoted the New Feudalism, also known as the Ownership Society, where one is what one owns.  Under his watch, hundreds of thousands of Americans signed up  for mortgages they couldn’t afford, as a path to home ownership, and then found themselves homeless when their payments ratcheted up, and their income didn’t.

And who wins, ultimately, when hundreds of thousands of Americans go bankrupt?  The people who have assets to begin with, who stay calm, and  can acquire the foreclosed properties cheap.  The rich get richer….

On the other hand, when I was an impressionable teenager in the 1970s, I saw how the opposite premise, that government should use its power to help the people, could backfire.  My parents had steady jobs, so there was never a question of not having a roof overhead or food on the table.  But we had both inflation and unemployment, something classical economics said wasn’t supposed to happen.

In the early 1970s, we had the energy crisis when the Arabs refused to sell us oil. The Federal government has spent billions since then to try to encourage alternate sources of energy.  And while there has been progress, we’re still addicted to oil, and moaned this spring when the price of gasoline shot up.  So I have to wonder what would change to make the next infusion of Federal billions actually accomplish something.

For my part, I’d like to see a government that doesn’t use its power to particularly help anyone.  But it’s far more compelling campaigning to suggest what the government can or should do than what it can’t or shouldn’t.  So we’re stuck with the candidates as they stand.

*          *          *

I was impressed with the speech made by Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for Vice-President,  at the convention last week.  She’s a good orator, and if her cover story is to believed, a good leader and administrator.  She’s also suffered the slings and arrows of life to a greater extent than your average politician.  All in all, it’s a compelling package, and more relevant than the average Vice Presidential candidate because her running mate, John McCain, will be the oldest person to become President if he is elected.

To some degree, I resented the commentary in the press about her lack of experience, and whether or not she had been properly vetted before her selection.  When I’ve had to hire someone, and have chosen experience over energy and a positive attitude given two otherwise similar candidates, I’ve generally been disappointed.  And I can’t get too terribly upset over Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter when I consider that Palin herself got married in her early 20s.  Some people get married earlier in life than others.

But as I contemplated the Obama buttons at the Labor Day parade, it came to me.  I’m sure that, in fact, Palin was very thoroughly vetted.  Her positions on issues, which didn’t really come out in the convention speech, are very far to the right.  She plays to the Republican base, more so than McCain.

She’s portrayed as a ‘reformer.’  Let’s grant that premise for a moment and consider: of everything that was and is wrong with the Bush administration, it never was in need of ‘reform.’  Our Fearless Leader made his decisions because he believed they were right, and not because someone paid him to.  Yes, all of his friends are in Big Oil, and he aspired to be a Big Oil man himself, but we knew that from the beginning, and voted for him anyway.

Sarah Palin is not a pit bull with lipstick: she’s Dubya with lipstick.

Posted in Sarah Palin, Holidays, Presidential election | No Comments »

3. September 2008 by admin.

At the political conventions this year, Tuesday night seems to be the night for the loser to extol the winner.  A week ago, at the Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton threw her ’support’ behind Barack Obama, even though she was unable to identify anything good about him beyond his not being a Republican, and her more memorable lines were about herself (’the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuit’).

Moreover, the whole convention last week was suffused with the funk of how Hillary should have properly won, but got upstaged by Obama, the upstart.

Last night, at the Republican convention, Fred Thompson  talked about John McCain, and it was a refreshing contrast.  Perhaps it was because Thompson was never a serious candidate, but he was able to actually identify good things about McCain, as well as noting that he’s not a Democrat.

Watching the Republican convention left me with the feeling that McCain was an honorable man who would make a fine President, something the Democrats failed to do at that point with Obama.

For my part, I’m still on the fence, and I have misgivings about both of the major candidates.  But it’s instructive that McCain seems to be held in higher esteem among the Republicans than Obama is among the Democrats.

Posted in Presidential election | No Comments »

1. September 2008 by admin.

I like to buy MP3 files from Amazon.  I grew up buying music at record stores, and I resist the idea of paying $15 a month to listen to ‘my music.’  But sometimes a song will cross my mind, and it’s cool to be able to look it up and, more often than not, download a copy on the spot.

The other day, the Billy Joel song ‘All for Leyna’ crossed my mind.  The song came out when I was coming to the sad realization that my high-school sweetheart was not going to be the love of my life.  The lyrics resonated with my situation at the time, the imagery at the beginning was clever (’She / stood on the tracks / waving her arms / leading me to that third rail / shock….’) and ‘Leyna’ was close enough to my sweetheart’s name for, well, rock and roll.

Listening to it now, the pain is gone.  My wife brings me peace and happiness, and my ‘Leyna,’ such as our ‘relationship’ ever was back then, is long, long gone.  I downloaded the song, listened to it for a few times, and moved on to other things.

My wife wants to travel to Greece this fall.  I considered the matter with some trepidation: ‘Leyna’ is Greek, and I went to some considerable effort back then to learn the language.  But now my wife wants to learn some Greek in preparation for the trip: uh-oh.  While in the city the other day, we bought a guidebook and an elementary Greek text.

To my pleasant surprise, that didn’t bother me either.  Most of my recollection of the vocabulary is gone, but I think my sense of pronunciation is still there.  I suspect that I’ll probably have a bigger reaction if I should ever have to write Z80 assembly code, yet another language that I learned at that time.

Posted in Navel-gazing | No Comments »