Anderson Blogs

Barack Obama, A Free-Market-Loving, Big-Spending, Fiscally Conservative Wealth Redistributionist is a very long article on Obama's economic views. Here is what I found most interesting:
"The fact that the economy grows — that it produces more goods and services one year than it did in the previous one — no longer ensures that most families will benefit from its growth. For the first time on record, an economic expansion seems to have ended without family income having risen substantially. Most families are still making less, after accounting for inflation, than they were in 2000. For these workers, roughly the bottom 60 percent of the income ladder, economic growth has become a theoretical concept rather than the wellspring of better medical care, a new car, a nicer house — a better life than their parents had."

***

Well before this point on the presidential calendar, it’s usually clear where a candidate fits within the political spectrum of his party. With Obama, there is vast disagreement about just how liberal he is, especially on the economy. My favorite example came in mid-June, shortly after Obama named Jason Furman, a protégé of Robert Rubin, the centrist former Treasury secretary, as his lead economic adviser. Labor leaders recoiled, and John Sweeney, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., worried aloud about “corporate influence on the Democratic Party.” Then, the following week, Kimberley Strassel, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, wrote a column titled, “Farewell, New Democrats,” concluding that Obama’s economic policies amounted to the end of Clintonian centrism and a reversion to old liberal ways.

Some of the confusion stems from Obama’s own strategy of presenting himself as a postpartisan figure. A few weeks ago, I joined him on a flight from Orlando to Chicago and began our conversation by asking about his economic approach. He started to answer, but then interrupted himself. “My core economic theory is pragmatism,” he said, “figuring out what works.”

***

In practical terms, the new consensus means that the policies of an Obama administration would differ from those of the Clinton administration, but not primarily because of differences between the two men. “The economy has changed in the last 15 years, and our understanding of economic policy has changed as well,” Furman says. “And that means that what was appropriate in 1993 is no longer appropriate.” Obama’s agenda starts not with raising taxes to reduce the deficit, as Clinton’s ended up doing, but with changing the tax code so that families making more than $250,000 a year pay more taxes and nearly everyone else pays less. That would begin to address inequality. Then there would be Reich-like investments in alternative energy, physical infrastructure and such, meant both to create middle-class jobs and to address long-term problems like global warming.

Read the whole thing. I found nothing that I can quibble with but then I find myself very sympathetic to Obama's economic theories - being pragmatic, see what works, instead of a blind adherence to a party line. If George W. Bush captained the Titantic, he would have called the iceberg an ice cube and then looked for a Democrat to blame for the hole. Here is a great excerpt on Bush:

What Obama blamed the current administration for, he said, was aggravating these trends with the tax code. To a large extent, Obama’s own economic agenda revolves around reversing Bush’s tax policies and then going a bit further in the other direction. Here, more than in his regulatory approach, Obama stands on the left side of the Democratic Party, but not exactly in the traditional tax-and-spend ways.

True, Bush did not create this economy in a White House basement with Dick Cheney and the witches from Macbeth. He has done nothing to help the economic problems, either. McCain will be more of the same.

Money. Too much money creating too much self-interest. That is what is wrong with the war on drug.

MUNCIE -- The Muncie-Delaware County Drug Task Force and former Police Chief Joe Winkle went on a spending spree last year with forfeited drug money, including expenses for a personal trainer and a 50-inch plasma television for the city hall gym.

Even bigger expenses questioned in a State Board of Account audit of 2007 city spending include payments of $31,199 for two high-end sport-utility vehicles for DTF officers, and paying off the remaining $17,873 loan balance on accused drug dealer Adrian Kirtz's confiscated 2003 GMC Denali that sits in storage.

More than $100,000 in DTF and Muncie police spending was questioned by auditors, who shut down the DTF's checkbook last year after a decade of telling city officials that forfeited drug money and assets had to go to the city's general fund to cover law enforcement expenses.

Drug money fuels DTF spending spree, Muncie Star. Press.

Money taken through the forfeiture money avoids the problems, the stink, the debate over budgets and taxes. Or so I thought reading this:

Winkle (former Muncie police chief) defended the spending on things that included donations to traveling baseball teams, which his son participated in, and $4,294 for a personal trainer who gave police officers "boot camp training" on how to use the gym.

"I would not have done anything different," said Winkle. "If you can take money from drug dealers and spend it on the police department and the kids from this community, I have no problem with that."

Given the lack of a mandatory fitness program for police, Winkle wanted to upgrade the police gym to improve employee wellness and reduce health care costs. Hence the $21,428 the plasma TV, large mirrors and other equipment.

Winkle also had no regrets for spending $2,000 for youths to attend a summer football camp at Ball State University, or $1,000 donations to the Muncie Pirates and the Muncie Boys and Girls Club, and another $1,350 to the Indiana Bulls baseball team.

"If someone needed to do something for kids, we always said yes," said Winkle.

Why not ask the city and taxpayers to pay for all this? Laziness? Or something more insidious? Winkle sounds very upbeat unless all this money was spent in violation of the law. Which then smacks not of laziness but of corruption.

Corruption?

But drugs are bad and taking money from drug dealers is good, right?

When one group gets to decide what laws they will obey and which they will not, what is the difference between the drug dealer and the DTF? Both are scofflaws. With one serious difference: the Mayor and the prosecutors and the police all took an oath to uphold the laws of Indiana and the drug dealers did not.

This behavior creates no incentive to solve the problems caused by illegal drugs. I say it creates the opposite incentive of never solving the problem but only to create the need for a perpetual "War on Drugs".

We, the people, need to start thinking of the drug problem as health/medical issue rather a police problem.

As a post-script, the Muncie Star-Press has State supreme court wants documents about McKinney pay in today's paper.

Senator Clinton delivered a great speech last night. I did miss Governor Warner's keynote speech but I went to bed wondering if I had not seen the key speech from last night. Watching her, I thought if she had given one speech like this during the primary then she might be nominee. She took the fight to McCain and the Republicans.

The New York Times has a transcript of the speech here.

I was reading Mailer’s Great American Meltdown in The New York Times when I reached thiis paragraph:
"What would happen to Indochina and the rest of the world if Communism were to carry the day in Vietnam? The dove majority, in Mailer’s judgment, “simply refused to face the possibility.” The mass peace movement, its grown-ups, anyway, had compressed a hostility to the war into what he called a “hopeless mélange, somehow firmed, of Pacifism and closet Communism.” And the resulting national debate over Vietnam seemed to him twisted and fake: “The hawks were smug and self­-righteous, the doves were evasive of the real question.”"
For all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth over what happened in Vietnam between 1968 and 1972, what did we actually gain and lose? Yes, we lost a lot of people but that is a superficial answer to the question I am asking and which is usually the point of these discussion. Those people were sent to die and did die for a more political/strategic reason.

At 48 looking back over thirty years ago, I see the Vietnam War as a battle in the much longer, wider Cold War. That we seem to have won. Well, there is no going back to the USSR. We now trade with Vietnam and they want our dollars. Thailand, Laos, Cambodia did fall under a Communist hegemony. The fall of Vietnam did not hinder our winning the Cold War which depended so much on our prestige as the land of the free. Yet Vietnam gets waved about as a bloody shirt. What it does show - in my opinion - is that we, the people, got so bamboozled by our politicians working on our own self-esteem as the do-gooders who could do no wrong (hey, we saved the world from the Nazis!) and fears of Communism (they want to take us over and make us into pod people!) for their own purposes entrenching themselves into positions of power.

Let us just make sure we do not let them do it any longer (yes, those voting for Bush in 2004 fell for this) with Iraq and our "War on Terror". We are smarter than that. (And we are - look at the 2006 Congressional election).

I cannot resist this. Both are from The Muncie Star-Press:

Report brings secret deal to light

Drug defendant and accused arsonist Adrian Kirtz -- seen as a key witness in the pending conspiracy-to-commit-bribery case against ex-county prosecutor Michael Alexander -- apparently wanted more in a confidential settlement last year than just splitting his money and property with the Muncie-Delaware County Drug Task Force.

McKinney, acting as DTF attorney, signed off on that out-of-court deal, which gave the DTF $25,212 along with a 2003 GMC Denali, a motorcycle and other personal property seized from Kirtz and his girlfriend, Lacie Williams, who were arrested in 2006 with nearly 18 ounces of cocaine between them.

McKinney, elected prosecutor in November of that year, was also the initial deputy prosecutor assigned to the criminal case against Williams.

McKinney says he’s target of ‘revenge and retaliation’

McKinney insists no one ever circumvented court action in forfeiture cases, and plans to contest most of Dailey’s findings on many grounds.

“I am confident that people of Delaware County can see through the facade and understand this for what it is and has been all along, a character assassination in the finest tradition of Delaware County politics, and revenge and retribution for… my attempts to clean up the justice system here in Delaware County,“ said McKinney, like Dailey a Democrat.

The UK's Telegraph gives a different persepctive on our stock market and economic woes with Should you put money on Uncle Sam?:

The market also has the tailwinds of a strengthening dollar and sliding oil price supporting it. So is now the time for British investors to re-examine Uncle Sam's stocks?

Stock market historian David Schwartz, who famously predicted both the slump in the Nasdaq after 2000, and the fall and rise after the September 11 attacks, is buoyant. "US markets generally do well in an election year, particularly in the second half, and it looks like the trend is continuing."

***

This outperformance has accelerated in the past three months. But is it likely to last?

On initial examination, the economic picture still looks grim. Although the US economy grew 1.9 per cent in the last quarter, meaning it is not yet technically in a recession (which requires two quarters of negative growth), most fund managers agree that one is imminent.

Andy Hollyman, fund manager on the Threadneedle American Equity fund, says: "In terms of all the indicators we are seeing, the US is in a recession. The payroll figures show rising unemployment. Corporate profits are down and the housing market is falling. All the drivers of the initial economic weakness are still present."

Now if it could be so good for us.

Some think that Bayh will get the nod from Obama. On one level, I like the idea - because maybe it will redeem Indiana from being the home of Dan Quayle. But I got to say - as objectively as possible - that Bayh is not the best pick. For an article pointing out his deficits, see The Backlash to Bayh from The Nation and Nuvo's Barack, don’t pick Bayh. One of the commentators to The Nation article means Richardson and I wonder now why he did not make the short list (but then I thought he was a good presidential pick).

Blue Indiana really nailed the problem with tea leaves:
A grain of salt should be taken if you're looking to read really far into this announcement. A swing-state push was planned for Saturday, and our geographic proximity to Illinois makes a visit pretty logistically sound, regardless of who the VP pick happens to be.
Which leaves me thinking about Joe Ely and I Had My Hopes Up High:
Well, the first ride I got was in a dynamite truck
The driver kept a' tellin' me his bad luck
As we swerved around the curves I began to shout
Hey-ey mister would you let me out
I had my hopes up high--I never though that I
Would ever wonder why I ever said good-by
I had my hopes up high

I reported before on the wrangling between the Delaware County Prosecutor and two of the judges and Muncie's Mayor over proceeds from drug forfeiture cases. Just so everyone knows, the Prosecutor is a Democrat as is Judge Dailey. Everyone else belongs to the Republicans. Judge Dailey released a report highly critical of the prosecutor.

Here is the story from The Muncie Star Press, Dailey says prosecutor 'deceitful':

"MUNCIE -- Delaware County Prosecutor Mark McKinney acted deceitfully in using confidential settlements to distribute and spend seized money and property from accused drug dealers, according to a report issued Monday by Delaware Circuit 2 Judge Richard Dailey.
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'McKinney's actions are purposeful, deceitful, and directly against the interests of his clients, the Muncie Common Council and Delaware County Council,' the judge wrote in the findings of his probe on civil drug forfeitures. 'He knowingly and willfully violated a court order and sought to conceal this action from the court.'

McKinney on Monday evening issued a statement denying 'any effort to mislead or deceive anyone.'"

***

Money raised through drug forfeitures and hundreds of thousands more that was seized by abandonment orders or default judgments was supposed to go to local government general funds or common school funds.

Dailey found no instance of any money ever going to government or schools in reviewing such cases conducted over the past decade.

"Those secret agreements... were intentionally drawn to avoid court supervision and adjudication of forfeitures as required by state law," Dailey wrote.

County sheriff's Sgt. Greg Ellison, county DTF supervisor, made many of those deposits along with former city DTF supervisor Jess Neal, who had been reassigned.

"Nobody ever told us the money was supposed to go there," Ellison said about depositing seized money in general funds.

***

Contacted Monday, Reed (former prosecutor) said he was shocked that McKinney -- elected prosecutor in November 2006 after several years as a deputy on Reed's staff -- misled the courts by using confidential settlements and other means to hide forfeiture work.

McKinney had a contract with Reed to handle forfeitures for more than a decade, generally receiving 25 percent of seizure money and property for attorney fees. That agreement was filed with Dailey's court two weeks ago.

Dailey found the confidential settlements generally avoided the mention of attorney fees and showed that McKinney and Hoffman clearly intended to "profit from their special positions as public servants invested with a public trust."

Reed also insisted he did not know the seized money and proceeds from property were going into accounts for the DTF or Muncie police instead of general funds for local government.

"It is actually shocking how they misled the courts like that," said Reed.

***

The prosecutor also said Reed lied when he claimed he did not know the forfeiture money was going into accounts for the DTF rather than the general fund.

"This was the procedure he himself established before I ever joined the prosecutor's office," McKinney said.

"For him to now claim he did not know the money was going to the DTF and that 'they misled the court' is pathetic," McKinney said of his former boss.

All right, it is common knowledge that our Democratic brethren in Delaware County would rather fight amongst themselves as the Star-Press reports in Local Democrats divided:

Thomas Cannon Jr., the Democratic nominee for Delaware Circuit Court 5, was unable to attend a golf outing sponsored by the local Democratic Party earlier this year because of a prior commitment.

He made a personal donation to sponsor a hole and had a few political signs delivered to the golf course.

'I have received an eyewitness account that my sign that had been placed in the vicinity of one of the tee stations close to the clubhouse was taken out of the ground, destroyed and thrown in the trash can by our party's appointed fall campaign liaison,' Cannon wrote in a letter on June 20 to Margie Landers, Democratic County Chairwoman."

(Worthwhile reading the comments, too.) We do not need this BS this year.

Meanwhile, McKinney's woes continue in Judge Feick's court. Today's Star Press headlined the story as Forfeited money not listed in DTF inventory.

Not wanting to sound like xenophobe or jngoistic but reading Eugene Robinson's Summer's Wake-Up Calls brought up what is a sort point for me. Clinton gets dumped on about missile secrets going to China (even though I have seen no proof that they got them) what George W. Bush did to us and for China goes unremarked (generally):

"Whenever the television cameras pull back to show Beijing's stunning new architecture -- the Bird's Nest, the bubble-wrapped swimming center, the state television headquarters building that has a hole in the middle and no visible means of support for the upper floors -- it's impossible not to recall that our relationship to China is that of debtor to creditor. And the fact is that one tends to be polite to the bank that holds one's mortgage."

***

Obama will probably talk more about engagement and the "international community," while McCain is likely to sound more confrontational. I'm pretty sure, though, that neither will come clean about a central truth: Our future is being decided not just in Washington but in Beijing and Moscow -- and in Riyadh, Islamabad, New Delhi, Dubai, Caracas, Abuja, Brasilia. . . .

We still have the wherewithal to lead. But we're deluding ourselves if we believe we won't have to adapt to the new reality.

Some older stuff here and a new one, too. Mostly about Obama and McCain and race.

Oh, if yo do not know who Roland was, just follow this link. I just could not help myself.

From Frank Rich's column in yesterday's New York Times comes The Candidate We Still Don’t Know (and it is not Obama):
"So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

Then there was E. J. Dionne Jr. writing on race and the Presidential race in EThe Unavoidable Issue :
"There is no doubt that two keys to this election are: How many white and Latino votes will Obama lose because of his race that a white Democrat would have won? And how much will African American turnout grow, given the opportunity to elect our nation's first black president?
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Let's dispose of the canard that there is something wrong with black people voting in overwhelming numbers for a black candidate. Minorities in the United States always turn out in a big way for the candidate who is breaking barriers on their behalf.

The most obvious example is Kennedy, who won roughly 80 percent of the Catholic vote in 1960, about 30 percentage points greater than the Catholic share won four years earlier by Democrat Adlai Stevenson. Proportionately, Kennedy's gain among Catholics was far greater than Obama's likely pickup over John Kerry's 2004 vote among African Americans, judging by the current polls.

More broadly, the race issue is used less overtly now than it used to be. When Democrats were the party of Jim Crow in the post-Civil War period, many in their ranks ran ugly, blatantly racist campaigns. Beginning in 1968 with Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, Republicans have been far more subtle in playing to white reaction on race.

***

Connolly argued that such voters saw the welfare state as turning on them, undermining the values they espoused and denigrating their efforts at self-reliance. They saw mandatory school busing as robbing them of their chance to secure a better education for their children by moving into better school districts. Especially among working-class white men, affirmative action seemed to treat "everyone else . . . either as meritorious or as unjustly closed out from the ranks of the meritorious."

When liberals dismissed such concerns as purely racist, Connolly noted, "These vulnerable constituencies did not need too much political coaxing to bite the hand that had slapped them in the face.
Good stuff, as usual, from Mr. Dionne.

A Mass Transit Mess from The Washington Post caught my eye because of our beloved Governor's obliviousness to mass transit as a solution to our problems:
"FOR THE FIRST time in 28 years, Americans are driving less, a happy development for proponents of public transportation. But as people shift to buses and subways, they are encountering transit systems that are crowded and outdated. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters has put forth a plan that would make those problems worse.

Ms. Peters has proposed borrowing money from the Highway Trust Fund's mass transit account to cover a projected $3.1 billion shortfall in highway maintenance and construction. It is unclear, though, whether Ms. Peters could borrow the money without harming mass transit capital projects such as the purchase of subway cars and construction of bus garages. Transportation groups also worry that repaying the money could be difficult if gas tax revenue continues to decline. The proposal is a shortsighted solution that would take money away from mass transit at the wrong time.

The Highway Trust Fund, which helps pay for highway and transit projects across the country, is veering toward bankruptcy. It could be out of money by the end of the year. The problem? High gas prices are causing Americans to drive fewer miles: The total in May was down 3.7 percent compared with the same period last year. This is good for the environment but bad for projects funded by the federal gas tax."


Colbert King wrote a piece on race and the Presidential race under the headline Two Speeches, Two Truths About America:
"It makes you wonder how Independence Day orators 150 years from now will look back upon this Fourth of July.

What will they make of freedom-loving people who, at the dawn of America's fourth century as a nation, question the patriotism of a U.S. senator because he doesn't wear a flag pin in his lapel or because he has a name that doesn't sound like theirs?

What will they say about our professed fidelity to religious freedom when they find out that many of the Americans who thank God for their religious liberty are also ready to turn their backs on a candidate if they think he is a Muslim or Mormon?

Or because he's black?

What, come to think of it, would Frederick Douglass think?"

Getting away from the president-to-be and to the president-that-is' economy, here is something I find kind of scary:
America is lone bright spot as fund managers flee stocks - Telegraph: "The US is emerging as the one bright spot in the global gloom, despite the credit mayhem. A net 7pc of investors are overweight in US equities, clearly betting that most of the bad news is already in Wall Street prices. The figure was negative in May.

With the tailwind of 2pc interest rates and a cheap dollar, America stands to benefit from the 'first-in, first-out' principle. Others have yet to take their full punishment from the cycle.

'The US has now become the country of cheap manufacturing. You've got 20pc wage inflation in emerging markets so FDI (foreign direct investment) is flowing back there,' said Karen Olney, Merrill's chief European equity strategist.

The investor love affair with India, China, and Asian markets over the last nine months has turned sour."
As bad as it is here, we are still better than elsewhere? With a global economy, that has to come back to bite us in the hindquarters.

Barack, don’t pick Bayh - NUVO.net:

"Sen. Barack Obama reportedly has Bayh on the shortlist for his running mate. So I’ll use the same comments to address Sen. Obama, who heretofore has shown good judgment.
Dude. Don’t do it. Please. Pick someone else. Anyone else. Being the governor of Indiana, a do-nothing senator from Indiana and the father of adorable twins does not qualify Bayh to be vice president."

Got agree. Our junior Senator is duller than dishwater.

Another draft from last month is this Brewed in Indiana | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star:

"Guild President Ted Miller, who also owns Brugge Brasserie, said the industry has been forced to focus on local customers even more in recent years as the prices of hops and gasoline have risen.

'For our size, for us craft guys, nobody's getting rich,' he said. 'We're in it because we love our craft.'

Miller estimated the current price of hops to be $22 to $28 a pound, compared with $5 a pound this time last year. The rise is caused by bad weather and the fact that many U.S. farmers have switched from hops to corn.

'It's not just that (prices) went up 400 percent,' Miller said. 'There's a lot of breweries that are searching for hops because they're just not available.'"

I think Obama mentioned hydrogen cars in his Lansing speech. Here is a review (a bit dated) of BMW's hydrogen car. Funny as well as informative.

BMW Hydrogen 7 - A Sedan Fueled by the Future - Review - NYTimes.com: "It seems that BMW drew the Port Authority’s attention when it began pumping liquid hydrogen into its small test fleet of dual-fuel sedans in Port Jersey, not far from the docks where BMWs disembark after their voyage from Germany. And historically speaking, it’s fair to say that the last hydrogen-dependent German flagship that docked in New Jersey left a lasting impression.

So while BMW designed the Hydrogen 7 to be as explosion-resistant as any gasoline car, memories of the Hindenburg zeppelin cause misunderstandings among consumers and bureaucrats, a company spokesman acknowledged.

•

As with hydrogen cars from Ford, General Motors, Honda and others, showcasing hydrogen’s carbon-free potential is the BMW’s reason for being. But unlike far-costlier fuel-cell cars — which generate electricity through a chemical reaction of gaseous hydrogen and oxygen — the BMW runs on either liquid hydrogen or gasoline in a familiar internal-combustion engine."

The mess may start here but it has spread elsewhere. (Another older draft)

Spain drops reassuring gloss as crisis deepens - Telegraph:

"Spain's finance minister Pedro Solbes has stunned the markets with an admission that his country faces the worst economic crisis in its history as the full effects of the property crash spread through the economy.

'This crisis is the most complex we have ever lived through given the plethora of factors on the table at the same time,' he told Punto Radio in Madrid, breaking with past efforts to put a reassuring gloss on events.

Mr Solbes said the Madrid bourse had suffered an 'earthquake', crashing 27pc since the start of June. He blamed the toxic cocktail of high oil prices, the global credit crisis and the sharp slowdown in the key export markets of North America and Germany."

Ok, I cna understand not impeaching George W. and his gang of buffoons as looking like revenge for Clinton but there is a deep visceral urge to see this. Especially if Congress must continue to look ineffectual.

Impeachment: On the Table But Not for Consumption:

"The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on one of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich's 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in the chamber have signaled that they do not want the committee -- let alone the full House -- to take a vote on impeachment.

How's that?

The Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the president's abuses of power -- perhaps as soon as next week. Expert witnesses will be called. Kucinich says that a foreign official -- who he has not named -- is willing to testify regarding presidential wrongdoing. And Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, the veteran Michigan Democrat who actually believes in presidential accountability but has had a hard time getting other top Democrats to embrace that belief, suggests that the hearing will review evidence of 'all the (Bush administration actions) that constitute an imperial presidency.'"

Here is a draft from last month that I finally am publishing. Yes, I still need to do other things than this blog (such as make a living!)

Op-Ed Columnist - L-ish Economic Prospects - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com:

"The Fed, in particular, has a hard time getting traction in modern recessions. In 2002, there was a strong sense that the Fed was “pushing on a string”: it kept cutting interest rates, but nobody wanted to borrow until the housing bubble took off. And now it’s happening again. The Onion, as usual, hit the nail on the head with its recent headline: “Recession-plagued nation demands new bubble to invest in.”

But we probably won’t find another bubble — at least not one big enough to fuel a quick recovery. And this has, among other things, important political implications.

Given the state of the economy, it’s hard to see how Barack Obama can lose the 2008 election. An anecdote: This week a passing motorist shouted at a crowd waiting outside a branch of IndyMac, the failed bank, “Bush economics didn’t work! They are right-wing Republican thieves!” The crowd cheered.

But what the economy gives, it can also take away. If the current slump follows the typical modern pattern, the economy will stay depressed well into 2010, if not beyond — plenty of time for the public to start blaming the new incumbent, and punish him in the midterm elections."

Docuticker » Blog Archive » New From the GAO:

"1. Rebuilding Iraq: DOD and State Department Have Improved Oversight and Coordination of Private Security Contractors in Iraq, but Further Actions Are Needed to Sustain Improvements
2. Combating Terrorism: Actions Needed to Enhance Implementation of Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership
3. Information Technology: Agencies Need to Establish Comprehensive Policies to Address Changes to Projects’ Cost, Schedule, and Performance Goals
4. Veterans Affairs: Continued Action Needed to Reduce IT Equipment Losses and Correct Control Weaknesses"

David Ignatius - 'Bomb Bomb Iran'? Not Likely. - washingtonpost.com:

"The administration's wariness of military options is also clear from recent efforts to dissuade Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, traveled to Israel in early June; he was followed in late June by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both officials explained to their Israeli counterparts why the United States believes an attack isn't necessary now, because the Iranians can't yet build a nuclear weapon, and why an attack would damage U.S. national interests.


McConnell and Mullen also informed the Israelis that the United States would oppose overflights of Iraqi airspace to attack Iran, an administration official said. The United States has reassured the Iraqi government that it would not approve Israeli overflights, after the Iraqis strongly protested any potential violation of their sovereignty."
This leaves McCain where? Is it just possible that Bush - with his talk of a withdrawal horizon (or whatever he babbled about) - doing this to hurt McCain? Interesting thought.

Unseen Burns work will give the world a new view of the Bard

"PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN SONGS, letters and prose by Robert Burns will form the heart of a new collection which will cast new light on the Bard's genius.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the University of Glasgow and Oxford University Press (OUP) are collaborating to produce the most comprehensive collection of Burns's work ever compiled.

In what will be a 10 to 15-year project, the Bard's work is being re-edited from scratch by prominent academics. The work will begin next year and will coincide with celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of Burns's birth.

Dr Gerard Carruthers, director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow, said the project will 'cast a new light on Burns', and added that Glasgow was an opportune place to begin such a venture."

If anyone has been paying close attention, I have announced the death of this blog for some time. The time has come.

Work, the necessity to make a living, make it more important to keep my law blogs afloat. Lastly, I took a teaching job with Indiana Business College. That may have to go away even though the money could come in handy. I even taking a bit of a break from my law blogs - time has been too short, energy has been lacking, and some thing has to give.

For now that means no regular posts here. I am sure I will get angry about something political and have to write about it, but it will be something special. I just cannot go on like this. I have been working hard the past two years to keep the practice afloat and I am afraid I have stretched myself to thin and the effort to keep afloat may come to nothing. Certainly worried that going past mere survival may be lost.

I thank those who read me. I thank you who have left comments here. I hope I did some good.

Be sure to check out the links and visit the blogs I have linked to.